Faculty Affiliates

Donna Alverman, Ph.D., is Distinguished Research Professor of Reading Education at the University of Georgia. A former middle school teacher in Texas and New York, she was principal investigator and co-director of the federally funded National Reading Research Center from 1992-1997. A past president of the National Reading Conference and past co-chair of the International Reading Association’s Commission on Adolescent Literacy, she currently edits Reading Research Quarterly. She has received the Oscar S. Causey Award for Outstanding Contributions to Reading Research, the Albert J. Kingston Award for Distinguished Service, and was elected to the Reading Hall of Fame. Her recent publications include Content Reading and Literacy: Succeeding in Today’s Diverse Classrooms (3rd ed.); Reconceptualizing the Literacies in Adolescents’ Lives; Struggling Adolescent Readers: A collection of Teaching Strategies; Popular Culture in the Classroom: Teaching and Researching Critical Media Literacy; and Adolescents and Literacies in a Digital World. She can be reached at dalverma@uga.edu.

Nader Amir, Ph.D., is primarily interested in experimental psychopathology with an emphasis on anxiety disorders. Specifically, he is interested in studying information-processing biases that may lead to the maintenance, and possibly the development, of anxiety disorders. To this end, he has used various paradigms that examine cognitive disturbances (e.g., attentional bias, implicit and explicit memory bias, interpretation bias) in anxious patients and normal individuals with elevated trait anxiety. This research has culminated in a theory of social anxiety that focuses on abnormalities in inhibition and activation of threat-relevant information in these individuals. He can be reached at amir@egon.psy.uga.edu.

Debbie Bandalos, Ph.D.

Jim Bason, Ph.D., is an Associate Research Scientist and Director of the Survey Research Center at the University of Georgia. Dr. Bason has been with the Survey Research Center since 1991; and since his appointment as Assistant Director in 1997, he has directly overseen more than 300 survey projects of varying scope and size. Dr. Bason is the author of several publications based on data collected by the Center in recent years and is an active member of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, a past President of the Southern Association for Public Opinion Research, and a current Executive Committee member of the National Network of State Polls. His research interests include survey methodology, elections and electoral behavior. He can be reached at jbason@uga.edu.

Steve Beach, Ph.D., received his doctoral degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1985 and then joined the faculty of the Psychology department at the University of Georgia in 1987 after working as a practicing clinician in outpatient, hospital and private practice settings. He was elected Fellow of the American Psychological Association (Divisions 12 and 43) in 1994. He currently serves as Professor of Psychology and is the Director of the Institute for Behavioral Research at UGA. Dr. Beach has published more than 100 scholarly papers on marital processes, close relationships and depression. He is the author of two books and serves on the editorial board of eight scholarly journals. He is the leading authority on the connection between marital processes and depression. He can be reached at sbeach@egon.psy.uga.edu.

Stephanie Bohon, Ph.D., is a demographer and Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Georgia. She holds degrees in economics, political science, sociology, and demography, including a doctorate in Demography and Sociology from Penn State University. Her work on Latino immigration and immigration policy has been published in several journals including Rural Sociology, Sociological Spectrum, Journal of Latinos and Education and Population Research and Policy Review. Her book, Latinos in Ethnic Enclaves: Immigrant Workers and the Competition for Jobs examines labor force discrimination among Latin American immigrants in different U.S. labor markets. Dr. Bohon and her colleague, Jorge Atiles, recently completed a two-year field study examining the growth and needs of Latino migrants in Georgia. Working with the Brookings Institution, she is extending that work to other southern states to examine differences between traditional and emerging immigrant gateways. Because of her expertise and award-winning research on Latino labor markets, she has been invited to serve on several expert panels and has testified across the state regarding the under-representation of Latinos in jury pools. Her work has been reported by National Public Radio, BBC-London, USA Today, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Mundo Hispanico. She can be reached at sbohon@uga.edu.

Ann Cordes Bothe, Ph.D.

Don Bower, Ph.D., is professor and Extension Service specialist in the Department of Child and Family Development at the University of Georgia. He has worked with the Georgia Extension System since 1975, serving community education needs through local Extension service faculty across the state. Dr. Bower has been awarded more than $11 million to support his initiatives in parenting education, adolescent development, sexuality education, and childhood injury prevention. He can be reached at dbower@uga.edu.

Linda Burton, Ph.D.

Linda Collins, Ph.D.

Dorothy Crumbly, Ph.D.

Adam Davey, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Child and Family Development. A family gerontologist by training, his methodological work focuses on developmental and family research methodology, including growth curve modeling and incomplete data problems. As leader of the Statistics Core Work Group, his activities at the Center include conducting simulations and methodological reviews, as well as helping to set project priorities for research methods of family-based preventive interventions. He did his graduate work at the Pennsylvania State University in Human Development and Family Studies and has been on the faculty at the University of Georgia since 1997. He can be reached at adavey@fcs.uga.edu.

Maureen Davey, Ph.D. received a doctoral degree in Child and Family Development, with a specialization in Marriage and Family Therapy, from Syracuse University. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Child and Family Development at the University of Georgia and also a licensed marriage and family therapist. Her research focuses on adolescent adaptation and factors that buffer teenagers from severe stressors. She has studied the influence of ethnic identity as a resilience-promoting factor in adolescents. Recently she conducted several pilot studies to examine how adolescents cope with a parent diagnosed with breast cancer as well as a focus group study to uncover optimal ways to intervene with these families. In collaboration with oncologists at several hospitals in Atlanta, she is now testing a family-focused preventive intervention with Caucasian and minority families, with the long-term goal of developing empirically supported interventions to help parents and their adolescents cope with cancer. She has published in Family Process, Journal of Adolescent Research, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, and Family Systems and Health. She can be reached at mdavey@uga.edu.

Caroline Desbiens, Ph.D.

Patricia East, Ph.D., is a Research Scientist in the Department of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at the University of California, San Diego Medical Center. Her research focuses on adolescent sexual behavior, pregnancy, and parenting, particularly the effects of an adolescent’s pregnancy for the teen’s family and siblings. Currently, Dr. East is studying the adaptational processes within Hispanic and African American families as they cope with a teenage daughter’s parenting. She also recently conducted the evaluation of California’s Adolescent Sibling Pregnancy Prevention Program (CASPPP), a state-wide program designed to prevent teenage pregnancy among the siblings of parenting teens. Dr. East has received numerous research awards, currently serves on four Editorial Boards for scientific journals, has served on several grant-reviewing committees for the National Institutes of Health, and is listed in Who’s Who in the World and Who’s Who in America. She can be reached at peast@ucsd.edu.

Margaret Ensminger, Ph.D.

Robert Ford, Ph.D.

Seyoum Gelaye, Ph.D.

Xiaojia Ge, Ph.D.

Claire Hamilton, Ph.D.

Steve Holloway, Ph.D.

Linda D. Johnson, Ph.D.

Hilda Kurtz, Ph.D.

Mark W. Lipsey, Ph.D., is the Director of the Center for Evaluation Research and Methodology, and a Senior Research Associate, at the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies. He received a Ph.D. in Psychology from The Johns Hopkins University in 1972 following a B.S. in Applied Psychology from The Georgia Institute of Technology in 1968. His recent research has mainly involved the application of meta-analysis techniques to identify effective intervention programs and predictive risk factors for juvenile antisocial behavior, issues of methodological quality in program evaluation research, and ways to apply research findings to improve program practice. He has published books, articles, and technical reports in these areas, including Practical Meta-Analysis (2001; with David Wilson) and Evaluation: A Systematic Approach (6th edition, 1999; with Peter Rossi and Howard Freeman). He can be reached at mark.w.lipsey@vanderbilt.edu.

Suniya Luthar, Ph.D.

Ronald Malega is a doctoral student in the Department of Geography at the University of Georgia. He specializes in urban and social geography. His current research interests include economic-racial residential segregation and issues of concentrated poverty and affluence. He can be reached at rmalega@uga.edu.

Deborah Martin, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Georgia. Her research interests focus on place representation, place and community identity, urban politics and activism, and qualitative methods. She has published articles about place and activism in The Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Gender, Place and Culture, Mobilization and Urban Geography. She can be reached at dgmartin@uga.edu.

Lily D. McNair, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Psychology in the Clinical Psychology Program at The University of Georgia. Her research interests include alcohol use and risky sexual behavior, particularly among African American adolescents, women, and couples. She has been involved in the Strong African American Families Program at the Center for Family Research, as well as the Parents Matter! Program in The Institute for Behavioral Research. She can be reached at ldmcnair@egon.psy.uga.edu.

Thomas McNulty received his Ph.D. in 1996 from the University at Albany – SUNY. He is currently Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Georgia. His current research focuses on explanation of racial/ethnic differences in violence (with an emphasis on hierarchical modeling of community contexts); labor market effects on delinquency; the impact of prison contexts on inmate suicides; the effect of school-level social capital on adolescent delinquency/victimization in school; counselor turnover in substance abuse treatment centers; and race/class differences in use of Employee Assistance Programs. He can be reached at tmcnulty@uga.edu.

Jerome Morris, Ph.D.

Stacey Neuharth-Pritchett, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Elementary Education at the University of Georgia. She received her doctoral degree in Educational Psychology from Purdue University. Her research interests include transitions to school, early grade retention and childhood asthma. She can be reached at sneuhart@coe.uga.edu.

Stephen Olejnik, Ph.D.

Greg Palardy, Ph.D. is an assistant professor in the Research, Evaluation, Measurement, and Statistics program in the department of Educational Psychology at the University of Georgia. He taught high school science for eight years before earning his Ph.D. in educational research methodology and Masters in applied statistics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research focuses on applications of multilevel and longitudinal models to school effectiveness evaluation. He can be reached at gpalardy@uga.edu.

Lynn Blinn Pike

Francois Sainfort, Ph.D., is the Associate Dean for Interdisciplinary Programs in the College of Engineering and the William W. George Professor of Health Systems in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. Prior to his arrival at Georgia Tech in 2000, he was a Professor of Industrial Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research and expertise focus on the development of mathematical modeling techniques for medical decision making, health outcomes measurement, health status assessment and monitoring, and health-related performance analysis. Dr. Sainfort is the current Director of the Health Systems Research Center, which is focused on the development and application of state-of-the-art (1) mathematical and computational modeling techniques, tools and theories for biologic and health systems design and analysis, and (2) mathematical and computational methods and theories for disease modeling, treatment, management and control. He has published over 100 refereed publications in health care journals and he is a current or past editorial board member for several leading journals. He reviews research proposals for the National Science Foundation, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the Department of Defense. He can be reached at Francois.sainfort@isye.gatech.edu.

Kimberly Shipman, Ph.D.

Ron Simons, Ph.D., is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Georgia. He did his graduate work at Florida State University and the University of Wisconsin. His program of research has emphasized several themes. First, he has examined the avenues whereby family processes influence the development of child and adolescent deviant behavior. This work has focused upon the consequences of various dimensions of parenting, marital conflict, and changes in family structure. Second, he has used a life course perspective to investigate the factors that account for the onset, amplification, and desistence of antisocial behavior. This work investigates the mediating and moderating influences of parents, school, and peers during adolescence, and romantic partners, peers, and employment during adulthood. He has also been concerned with a variety of theoretical questions relating to domestic violence, including issues such as the relation between domestic violence and other types of deviant behavior, the processes that account for intergenerational transmission, and the extent to which marital violence and child abuse are stable behaviors over time. Fourth, Dr. Simon has examined the impact of racial/ethnic group discrimination upon child development; and finally, much of his recent work has investigated the mechanisms whereby community context influences family interaction and child development. He can be reached at rsimons@uga.edu.

Howard Stevenson, Ph.D.

Robert J. Vandenberg, Ph.D., is a full professor in the Department of Management of the Terry College of Business. A social psychologist by training, Bob’s methodological research focuses on measurement invariance issues, the application of latent growth modeling, and multilevel structural modeling. He is a member of the Statistics Core Work Group, which is responsible for addressing methodological and statistical issues as they apply primarily to evaluating family-based preventive interventions. Bob completed his Ph.D. at the University of Georgia in 1982 in the Department of Psychology and returned to UGA in 1993 as a faculty member. Prior to 1993, he was with the Department of Management at Georgia State University. He can be reached at rvandenb@uga.edu.