Center Faculty and Staff
- Emilie Phillips Smith, PhD
- Center Director
- Professor of Human Development and Family Studies
- emilieps@psu.edu
- Dr. Smith's work is in the area of preventing youth violence and aggression and promoting positive child and family development. She is particularly interested in approaches that develop partnerships across the home, school, and community contexts. Dr. Smith has been involved in a number of funded local and national initiatives across multiple sites to reduce violence and aggression using universal school-based and targeted family intervention.
- Dr. Emilie Phillips Smith's Curriculum Vitae (CV)
- Lori Francis, PhD
- Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health
- laf169@psu.edu
- Dr. Francis is a developmental psychologist with expertise in early childhood influences on problematic eating behaviors and overweight. Her research has focused on factors within the immediate family environment that affect parental child-feeding strategies, children’s self-regulation of energy intake and excessive weight gain throughout middle childhood. In addition, she has examined various links between parental overweight status and family food and activity environments.
- Dr. Lori Francis' Curriculum Vitae (CV)
- Rhonda Belue, PhD
- Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Administration
- rzb10@psu.edu
- Dr. Belue's research interests include health disparities in families and children, evaluation methodology,and medical decision making. She teaches epidemiology, research methods, quantitative methods.
- Dr. Rhonda Belue's Curriculum Vitae (CV)
- Stephanie Ebeling
- Administrative Assistant
- sje2@psu.edu
- Stephanie Ebeling is the administrative assistant in the Center for Family Research in Diverse Contexts. She has been at the Pennsylvania State University for over twenty five years and has been with the Center since its inception in 1999. Her responsibilities in the Center are varied and range from managing daily office procedures of the Center to serving as liaison and ‘ambassador of good will’ between the Center and the College of Health and Human Development.
- Sharon Childs
- Graduate Assistant
- ssc5@psu.edu
- Sharon Childs is a graduate assistant in the Center for Family Research in Diverse Contexts. Sharon earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Penn State in the College of Liberal Arts and is pursuing her Ph.D. in Linguistics and Applied Language Study with an emphasis on L2 teacher learning and professional development.