Department Highlights

Faculty Highlights

Distinguished Senior Lecturer, George Scarlett, was featured in Tufts NOW and talked about "Teaching Kids About Nature to Save the Planet." Read full story here.

Assistant Professor, Emma Armstrong-Carter, was quoted in an article in Washington Post. The article is a moving story about a college student caring for his younger siblings. Read full story here.

Julie Dobrow has been promoted to Distinguished Senior Lecturer, effective September 1, 2024. Congratulations Julie!

Assistant Professor Jordan Jurinsky has been selected to be a Neubauer Faculty Fellow for 2024-2025.

Professor Richard M. Lerner, the Bergstrom Chair in Applied Developmental Science and Director of the Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development has been appointed the new Editor of Review of General Psychology. Professor Lerner was also inducted in the 2024 National 4-H Hall of Fame on October 14th. Congratulations on these two designations!

Lecturer, Cynthia Smith, was featured in Tufts NOW, Class of 2024: Relationship Reflections. Congratulations Cynthia! See full article here.

2024 Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Faculty Teaching and Mentoring Award It is our great pleasure to share with you that Senior Lecturer Kerri Modry-Mandell has been awarded the 2024 Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Faculty Teaching and Mentoring Award. This award recognizes faculty members who have demonstrated outstanding support of a graduate student (or graduate students) from course completion through research and post-degree placement. Congratulations Kerri!

Emma Armstrong-Carter has been selected for a Small Grant in the amount of $7,500 from the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD), titled “Children and adolescents who are caregivers for family: Assessing disparities and opportunities in partnership with local schools.” Congratulations Emma!

Assistant Professor, Eileen Crehan, appeared in Tufts NOW. She is the house faculty advisor for The Neurodivergent House. Read full article, Creating a Place Where Neurodiverse Students Can ‘Recharge and Relax.’

Senior Lecturer, Julie Dobrow, and Jennifer Burton, Professor of the Practice in Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies, were awarded a Tufts Diversity Fund grant. These funds helped support their film on the lift of 19th century Black educator/activist Ellen Garrison, and screenings and community conversations at Tufts on May 1st.

FRAC Funded Project The subcommittee on Open Access funds, the Faculty Research Awards Committee has approved Assistant Professor Fernando Salinas-Quiroz’ application for funding on their project, “Comfort with LGB people and attitudes toward same-sex parenting in Continental American Hispanic Nations,” and has been granted this FRAC award of $2,590. Here’s the link to the publication.

Four of our faculty were featured in a recent Tufts NOW article on Eight Ways to Raise Happier, Healthier Kids. Megan Mueller spoke about way #2 Consider getting a dog, Julie Dobrow commented on way #5 Keep screen time creative and safe, and both Richard M. Lerner and George Scarlett commented on way #6 Make time to play outdoors. Read full article in Tufts Now.

Professor Richard M. Lerner, the Bergstrom Chair in Applied Developmental Science, speaks at the Vatican. He attended the 29th General Assembly of Members of the Pontifical Academy for Life, which was held at the Vatican in February 2024. Lerner has been a member of this Vatican Academy since 2017.

An Inclusive Approach to Sex Education. A recent Tufts NOW article on inclusive sex education featured our own Assistant Professor Eileen Crehan, sharing about her work on accessible, comprehensive sexuality and relationship education. She also has been offered an appointment with Tisch College, effective July 2024.

Lights, Camera, Activism. For the past couple of years, Senior Lecturer Julie Dobrow has worked with Jennifer Burton, a filmmaker colleague who is a professor of the practice in the Tufts department of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies, on a project called Half the History. Read full article in Tufts Now.

Environmental Studies hosted Tufts’ senior lecturer, author, and performer, Renata Celichowska, who gave a talk, “A Celebration of and for Trees: Creating Eco-performance,” in March.

Jessica Dym Bartlett, MSW, PhD, has a new book - Nabors, L., & Bartlett, J. D. (Eds.) (2024). Family engagement in mental health interventions for young children. Springer.

Professor Christine McWayne and her colleague, Dr. Andres Bustamante (UC Irvine), received a grant of $849,825.00 from the Heising-Simons Foundation for the project entitled, "Building Capacity, Community, and Home-School Connections in Early Childhood Classrooms." The three-year project will evaluate the impact of professional learning for the Santa Ana Unified School District (California) teachers as they co-create culturally inclusive home-to-school practices across their early childhood classrooms. The project represents a replication and extension of the RISE approach developed in collaboration with ABCD Boston Head Start partners over the last 13 years.

Sara Johnson, Associate Professor and Matt Gee, doctoral student received Springboard award for their project titled, “Transforming the Understanding and Measurement of Youth Civic Engagement."

Fernando Salinas-Quiroz, Assistant Professor and Noah Sweder, undergraduate student, co-authored an article that was published in June issue of Frontiers in Sociology, titled “Authentic Gender Development in Non-Binary Children.” To read an abstract pulled from ResearchGate, see https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.tufts.edu/10.3389/fsoc.2023.1177766

Julie Dobrow, Jennifer Burton, and the Robbins House Museum are pleased to announce they have received a $10,000 grant from the Expand Mass Stories initiative from Mass Humanities. Mass Humanities announced grants to 42 cultural non-profits for projects that include exhibits, documentary films, oral histories, and public events. Totaling $751,424, the grants will help reimagine the story of Massachusetts. These funds will support the new Half the History film, "Ellen Garrison: Scenes from the Life of an Activist." Production on this film begins Indigenous People's weekend, shooting on location in Concord, MA. Several Eliot-Pearson students and faculty are participating in this film project.

Jim Lipsky, ASL Program Coordinator and our ASL program have been featured in an article in the Tufts Daily https://www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2023/09/the-joy-and-growing-pains-of-american-sign-language-at-tufts. The article says a lot about the wonderful accomplishments of Jim Lipsky and his co-workers teaching ASL – a program that is, for students, more than about learning a language as it opens a door on an amazing culture and as it equips students to work with children and their parents where ASL is needed.

Julie Dobrow, along with Jennifer Burton (Department of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies and FMS) launched an initiative called Half the History. The Half the History project aims to tell untold and under-told stories of women's lives through short-form biography, film and podcast. Dobrow and Burton have been awarded several grants for this work, including Tufts Springboard, Diversity, and Bridging Differences grants, along with a New England Humanities Consortium grant. Along with a team of Tufts students, have been busily crafting content in written, film and audio forms. Their website will officially launch in March, coinciding with Women's History Month. They will begin shooting their new film about the inspirational life of Ellen Garrison, a young Black woman who became an abolitionist, teacher and civil rights advocate, in October. In the meantime, Dobrow and Burton were asked to mount an exhibit of their work, which will go up in Barnum Hall in early September. They were also asked to lead the kickoff Civic Life Lunch for Tisch College on the theme of untold stories. This event will take place on September 19, and you can register for it here: https://tischcollege.tufts.edu/news-events/events/civic-life-lunch-who-tells-her-story-hidden-histories-historic-women

Anyone interested in participating in Half the History - including being in the upcoming film! - should contact Julie Dobrow.

Julie Dobrow was featured in Tufts NOW with article: “Six Tips for Keeping Children Safe Online.” Julie is an expert in children’s use of digital media offers advice for helping kids protect themselves in the digital world. See article here: https://now.tufts.edu/2023/02/23/six-tips-keeping-children-safe-online

Richard M. Lerner has been re-appointed to serve on the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life for another five-year term, from March 1, 2023, through March 1, 2028.

Ellen Pinderhughes was recognized by our peers for her stellar research contributions! Ellen was selected as one of the recipients of the Senior Distinguished Contribution Awardees by the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD). Specifically, she is being recognized for Distinguished Contributions to Understanding International, Cultural, and Contextual Diversity in Child Development Award https://www.srcd.org/news/2023-srcd-biennial-awardees. Ellen will receive this award at the SCRD Biennial meeting in March in Salt Lake City.

Martha Pott has been selected as the 2023 winner of the Seymour Simches Award for Distinguished Teaching and Advising. As Dean Glaser conveyed to Martha, she is receiving this award for her “deep commitment to our students, your creative approach to pedagogy and advising, and the contribution that you’ve made to the education of countless Child Development students (and others!) over the past two decades…” Martha will be presented with the award at the final faculty meeting of the year.

Fernando Salinas-Quiroz has recently been elected to serve on the SRCD Latinx Caucus Steering Committee 2023-2025, as the Technical/Social Media Manager!

Student Highlights

Alexa Hasse, a fourth-year PhD candidate, co-authored a report has part of their Common Sense Media Internship, "The Dawn of the AI Era: Teens, Parents, and the Adoption of Generative AI at Home and School." Based on a nationally representative survey of 1,045 U.S. parents of one or more teens age 13 to 18, and responses from one of these teens, the study explores trends in generative AI including why and how teens use gen AI, how gen AI is being integrated in–or banned from–schoolwork, whether schools and teachers are talking about gen AI to students and parents, and how young gen AI users believe these new platforms will shape their future schooling and jobs.

2024 Award Recipients

Graduate Students
Grace Campbell, Master’s Applied Research Practice Integration Award
Simone Dufresne, Eliot-Pearson Alumni Award
Matt Gee, Outstanding Graduate Contribution to Diversity and Inclusion
Kylett Jones, Master’s Thesis Research Practice Integration Award
Natasha Keces, Graduate Student Council Service Award
Julie Segovia, Doctoral Research Practice Integration Award

Undergraduate Students
Caroline Abut, Phi Beta Kappa
Kaela Brandt, Department of Child Development Prize
Lille Bukzin, Undergraduate Research Practice Integration Award
Weiwei Chan, Department of Child Development Prize
Alexandra Dingle, Presidential Award for Civic Life and Phi Beta Kappa
Anna Goldstein, Undergraduate Research Practice Integration Award
Oumou Juwara, Alumni Senior Award Honoree
Alina Kilcullen, Eliot-Pearson Alumni Award
Sydney Kwaku, Class of 1921 Leonard Carmichael Prize Scholarship and Phi Beta Kappa
Naya Maycock, Class of 1911 Prize Scholarship
Daxton Mironoff, Phi Beta Kappa
Suzune Montag, Phi Beta Kappa
Maya Montell, Undergraduate Research Practice Integration Award, Phi Beta Kappa and Frederic J. Shepler Memorial Prize in French
Melissa Morales, Eliot-Pearson Alumni Award
Catherine Quinn, Department of Child Development Prize
Alienor Rice, William Howell Reed Prize in German and Phi Beta Kappa
Nika Renshaw, Gemma Cifarelli Memorial Scholarship
Marlee Stout, Phi Beta Kappa
Irene Yoo, Eliot-Pearson Alumni Award

Carolina Gonçalves, a fifth-year PhD candidate, has been elected to the SRA Board of Directors, being elected to serve as SRA Emerging Scholars Board Representative.

Carolina Gonçalves is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate at Eliot-Pearson is our Ph.D. student spotlight in our February/March 2024 newsletter. Read full article here.

Marisa Huang, MA student, preparing for her Ph.D. Read full article here.

Sophomore Gabriela Perez, was recently featured on the cover of Tufts JUMBO magazine. A double major in Child Study and Human Development and Biopsychology She is currently a research coordinator in CSHD where she helps with data collection and organization, and mediates students' transitions from research project planning to execution. To read more about Gabriela, here’s a link to the magazine article: JUMBO https://admissions.tufts.edu/discover-tufts/jumbo-magazine/

Senior Anna Goldstein, won Honorable Mention by the International Photography Association for her photograph, “Blue Light.”

Matthew Gee, 4th Year PhD student, was named one of the 2023 Scholars and Mentors for the Towards 2044: Horowitz Early Career Scholar Program from SRCD.

Carolina Goncalves, 4th Year PhD student, received from SRCD, a Dissertation Research Funding Award (DFA), which are given to dissertation research proposals that are exceptionally noteworthy and display a strong potential to contribute to the field of child development.

DICE Lab
Members of the Development of Identity and Community Engagement (DICE) Lab and their collaborators presented their work at the Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting in March and the Society for Research on Adolescence Annual Meeting in April. Their presentations included: 1. Psychometric Testing of the Critical Reflection on Sexism Scale Among Young Adults in the U.S. 2. Exploring Conceptualizations of Racism Among Black and White College Students: Implications for Critical Consciousness Development Scholarship 3. An Exploratory Investigation of Associations between Personal and Social Identities among White, Heterosexual, Cisgender Young Adults in the U.S. 4. “That's When I Realized We Needed to Speak Up”: Exploring the Civic Socialization Narratives of White American Young Adults

Rachel Dooley, 2nd Year Master's student recently presented her research on her thesis titled "Implicit Bias in the Child Welfare System: Placement Decisions for White Children vs. Black Children" during a poster session at the Society for Research in Child Development's 2023 Biennial Meeting.

Melissa Lovitz, 5th Year PhD student accepted a full-time lecturer position at Queens College for the 2023-2024 academic year. She will be teaching in the Human Development and Family Sciences program in the Department of Family, Nutrition, and Education Sciences. She has also built connections with researchers at The Ohio State University to share data for her dissertation about parent-provider relationships in early childhood education settings. She also applied for and used data from the Child and Family Data Archive and the Head Start FACES study for her dissertation work. Using her knowledge from E-P classes on resilience, cultural sensitivity, and her teaching training from the GIFT fellowship, Melissa Lovitz created a monthly program for Jewish people who identify as women, trans, or gender-non binary, to recognize the new moon. This program is focused on integrating the Jewish practice of recognizing the new moon/new month and mental health recovery. For the last 5 years, Melissa Lovitz has mentored Boston-area high school students to run marathons. The program uses principles of Positive Youth Development and has been enhanced by Melissa's knowledge of PYD from classes she's taken at Tufts. The program runs annually from November - May, culminating in a marathon that mentors and students run together.

Madeline Nievera, 2nd Year Master's student was accepted to the Formative Education PhD program in the Lynch School of Education & Human Development at Boston College. She will begin doctoral studies this upcoming Fall where she will be working with Dr. Marina Bers, whose research focuses on the role of coding, robotics, and technology in promoting positive youth development in early childhood.

DEIB Student Committee In response to the death of George Floyd, E-P doctoral students revived and reimagined the E-P Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Student Committee. The committee is comprised of students from all levels of study in the department (i.e., undergrad, masters, and PhD). The committee has worked on several projects related to internal department culture and awareness of current events and holidays, among other things.