FACULTY
STAFF
Eric Allard
Dr. Allard investigates the behaviors and mental processes that impact healthy emotional functioning across adulthood and old age. Of particular interest are age differences in the strategies and abilities individuals utilize to manage their emotional states. Dr. Allard’s lab uses various tasks and methods, which include assessing the role of visual attention (via eye tracking) and psychophysiological activity (via heart rate and skin conductance measures) on successful emotion regulation throughout the adult lifespan. Students interested in working in Dr. Allard’s lab are invited to contact him.
| Faculty Profile | e.s.allard@csuohio.edu |
Blair Baker
Dr. Blair Baker's research aims to establish racially centered prevention and intervention practices that reduce the plight of racial stress (e.g., exposure to racial discrimination) among Black students in K-12 settings. Her lab specifically investigates a) educators' intervention approaches to racism among students and b) experiences of racial battle fatigue among Black students in secondary education settings. Dr. Baker is willing to meet with graduate and undergraduate students who are interested in joining her lab.
| Faculty Profile | b.a.baker64@csuohio.edu |
Patrick Frato
Mr. Frato is a school psychologist whose research interests include grade level retention, systems change, response to intervention, and reading interventions. Due to his teaching commitments, he is not seeking student assistance and is not available to supervise student research.
| Faculty Profile | p.frato@csuohio.edu |
Elizabeth Goncy
Dr. Goncy investigates how relationships (e.g., romantic, peer, parent-child) impact behavior during adolescence and young adulthood with specific focus on dating abuse, aggression, victimization, and substance use. She studies a) the etiology of aggression, and resulting victimization, and substance use and the identification of risk and protective factors and consequences, b) mental health issues related to dating abuse, substance use, and aggression, and c) relationship factors during these developmental periods. She is willing to meet with highly motivated undergraduate and graduate students to discuss research opportunities in her lab.
| Faculty Profile | e.goncy@csuohio.edu |
Michael Horvath
Dr. Horvath investigates (1) how people seek balance between their work and non-work lives, including, but not limited to, the role of religion; (2) how people look for jobs—the strategies they use, their motivation for searching, and what attracts them to particular organizations; (3) the causes and effects of forgiveness for workplace offenses; and (4) gender equity in STEM professions. Availability of research opportunities with Dr. Horvath varies over projects and semesters; he is happy to talk with potential student collaborators.
| Faculty Profile | m.horvath59@csuohio.edu |
Robert Hurley
Dr. Hurley’s research area is cognitive neuroscience. He uses techniques such as eye tracking, electroencephalography (EEG), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to better understand how the human brain processes language, recognizes objects, and links the two together. His research program involves testing typical younger and older adults as well as individuals with disorders of language (aphasia) and object recognition (agnosia). Dr. Hurley is Dr. Hurley is open to supervising research with undergraduates and students in the Psychological Science MA and the Adult Development & Aging PhD programs.
| Faculty Profile | r.s.hurley@csuohio.edu |
Tawana Jackson
Dr. Jackson's primary focus is teaching. She has a BA in Psychology from Bowling Green State University, an MA in Counseling Psychology from Ball State University and a PsyD in Clinical Psychology from Wright State University. In addition to her passion for teaching, Dr. Jackson is dedicated to social justice issues and has great interest in research and service which impact those from marginalized and underserved communities. As a practitioner, Dr. Jackson is enthusiastic about expressive psychotherapies, play therapy and culturally relevant treatment modalities. Due to her teaching commitments, she is not currently seeking student research assistants.
| Faculty Profile | t.m.jackson24@csuohio.edu |
Kathie Judge
Dr. Judge’s research focuses on developing, implementing, and evaluating cognitive rehabilitative, psychosocial skills training, and care-coordination models for individuals with cognitive impairment, their family caregivers, and health care providers. These intervention protocols are designed to positively impact a wide range of well-being, strain, coping, and functional outcomes. Additionally, Dr. Judge’s research seeks to understand the illness experience associated with cognitive impairment, including individuals living with dementia, stroke, and/or traumatic brain injury. Students interested in working with Dr. Judge are invited to contact her.
| Faculty Profile | k.judge46@csuohio.edu |
Conor McLennan
Dr. McLennan is a cognitive psychologist who directs the Language Research Laboratory. His research interests include language perception, bilingualism, cognitive aging, and other topics in perception, language, and cognition. The goals of his research program include understanding how various populations of listeners represent and process spoken language, understanding the role of bilingualism on cognitive processes such as inhibition, and considering how language research can be applied in interesting ways to address practical problems in other areas. Any student interested in possible research opportunities is encouraged to contact Dr. McLennan directly.
| Faculty Profile | c.mclennan@csuohio.edu | Podcast |
Colleen McMahon
Dr. McMahon conducts research on behavioral assessment and intervention techniques as well as professional issues in school psychology. She is particularly interested in (a) accuracy of school and home-based functional behavior assessment with children; (b) child and adolescent self-regulation interventions; and (c) peer and self-management techniques to improve undergraduate academic success and belongingness. Dr. McMahon is willing to serve as a member of an Honor's thesis committee in 2022-2023.
| Faculty Profile | c.m.mcmahon@csuohio.edu |
Shereen Naser
Dr. Naser's research focuses on questions of equity in educational practice. Active projects include addressing racial disproportionality in student behavioral referrals, investigating the impact of and re-imagining what school-based sexuality education might look like for queer and gender diverse youth, and describing the experiences of Arab American youth in schools. Dr. Naswer is happy to answer student questions about research and to have undergraduate students talk to her about working in her lab.
| Faculty Profile | s.naser@csuohio.edu | Podcast |
Matthew Nordlund
Dr. Nordlund received his B.A. from Hamline University in 2002 and his Ph.D. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from The University of Akron in 2009. He has since taught psychology at a number of schools, including The University of Akron, Kent State, Stark State, Ashland University and Cleveland State University. His primary research interests include the effect of priming on self-perceptions of personality and obstacles to the accurate measurement of personality. Dr. Nordlund is currently not seeking students for research supervision.
| Faculty Profile | m.nordlund@csuohio.edu |
Olivia Pethtel
Dr. Pethtel’s primary focus is teaching. Beyond her passion for teaching courses within her specialization of Developmental Psychology, she is enthusiastic about teaching a wide variety of Psychology courses, including Lifespan Development, Abnormal Psychology, Introduction to Psychology, Research Methods, and Psychology of Women and Gender. She has taught these courses and more at Bowling Green State University, Youngstown State University, and Saint Francis University. Dr. Pethtel has published research in the areas of adult development and aging in relation to well-being, decision-making, and culture. Outside of her professional work, she also enjoys playing music and disc golf. Dr. Pethtel is willing to supervise students on independent research projects that are geared toward students' research interests. she is also willing to serve as a committee member on student thesis and honors projects.
| Faculty Profile | o.pethtel@csuohio.edu |
Amir Poreh
Dr. Poreh is a clinical psychologist who specializes in neuropsychological assessment and assessment of personality disorders. He has developed the "Quantified Process Approach” to neuropsychological assessment. Dr. Poreh has also developed a novel measure for the study of visual spatial memory and is currently validating it with various clinical populations such as patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, stroke and epilepsy. Additionally, he is developing a new personality inventory aimed at improving psychiatric care. Dr. Poreh has an active research lab and is open to supervising and/or involving highly motivated undergraduate and graduate students in his research program.
| Faculty Profile | a.poreh@csuohio.edu |
Kathleen Reardon
As a researcher at the intersection of clinical and personality sciences, Dr. Reardon aims to understand how we can leverage personality to prioritize healthy socioemotional development. Her research interests include externalizing behaviors viewed from a developmental psychopathology perspective. She focuses on both adaptive and maladaptive outcomes, with an approach that accounts for multiple levels of analysis including biomarkers, individual differences, and environmental influences such as relationships, life stress, socioeconomic status, and culture. She has examined the influence of personality on several disinhibited phenotypes in youth, including physical and relational aggression, gambling, substance use, and risk-taking behaviors, with an emphasis on personality disorder-relevant traits (e.g., dominance, narcissism, callousness, assertiveness). Students with interests in youth externalizing problems, personality, or personality pathology are invited to contact Dr. Reardon.
| Faculty Profile | k.w.reardon@csuohio.edu |
Andrew Slifkin
Dr. Slifkin investigates the control of action (i.e., motor control) and action-related perceptual processes. He has studied the control of manual aiming and force production, focusing on how such output is regualted by visuomotor feedback processes. His research interests also include motor imagery, embodied cognition, interval timing, and the use of time-series analysis and complexity indices to characterize motor-output variability. Much of Dr. Slifkin's research has used healthy younger adult participants, but he has also conducted research with rodent subjects, healthy older adults, individuals with Parkinson's disease, and those with spinal-cord injury. In all of that research, Dr. Slifkin has been interested in identifying the information processing mechanisms involved in the control of action. More recently, he has been involved in the development of technology--using artifical intelligence and robotics--to help those with upper limb disability feed themselves. Students interested in research in Dr. Slifkin’s laboratory are encouraged to contact him to discuss potential opportunities.
| Faculty Profile | a.slifkin@csuohio.edu |
Albert Smith
Dr. Smith conducts two disparate lines of research. In one, in the area of health survey methodology, he collaborates with nutritionists and statisticians to improve methodology for dietary data collection and to understand situational and respondent characteristics that are associated with errors in dietary reports. In the other, he investigates word perception and the stimulus factors that influence it. Students interested in research in cognition are invited to contact Dr. Smith to discuss research opportunities.
| Faculty Profile | a.f.smith@csuohio.edu |
Ken Vail
Dr. Vail’s research is focused on existential psychology, including the consequences of humans’ awareness of their own mortality, autonomy, and choice freedom, and the influence of these existential concerns on cultural activity (e.g., politics, religion), personal growth, and both physical health (e.g., nutrition, carcinogenic behavior) and mental health (e.g., meaning in life, anxiety, depression). Dr. Vail is Director of the Social Psychology & Existential Attitudes Research (SPEAR) Lab, where graduate and undergraduate students can gain hands-on training in major aspects of research, including theory and research questions; research design and preparation; participant recruitment; conducting experiments and collecting data; preparing data for analysis; and the analysis and interpretation of data patterns. Students interested in research careers are encouraged to contact Dr. Vail about training opportunities.
| Faculty Profile | k.e.vail@csuohio.edu |
Ilya Yaroslavsky
Dr. Yaroslavsky studies the roles of autonomic nervous system and attention processes in emotion regulation and the transmission of depression risk. He seeks to understand how people’s efforts to change how they feel are influenced by physiological states, attentional resources, and interpersonal environments. He aims to explore these relationships in adults, adolescents, and within families (both inside and outside the laboratory). Interested students who wish to obtain research experience and intend to pursue graduate training in clinical psychology are invited to contact Dr. Yaroslavsky about research opportunities.
| Faculty Profile | i.yaroslavsky@csuohio.edu |
STAFF
Barb Durfey
Ms. Barb supports the Department of Psychology with administrative needs including course registration, thesis approvals, degree completion, graduate admissions, access control, department reception, and more. Current students are welcome to stop by her office any time during work hours with questions or concerns.
| UN 715 | b.durfey@csuohio.edu |
Mads Meridian
Mx. Mads supports the Department of Psychology with administrative needs including contracts, scheduling classes, purchasing/reimbursement, travel funding, budget monitoring, department website updates, social media, and event planning. Current students are welcome to stop by their office any time during work hours with questions or concerns.
| UN 716 | m.meridian@csuohio.edu |