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.  Curriculum Vitae

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.

Curriculum Vitae

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.

Curriculum Vitae

Stephanie Ebeling
sje2@psu.edu

Stephanie Ebeling is the administrative assistant in the Center for Human Development and 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
ssc5@psu.edu

Sharon Childs is a graduate assistant in the Center for Human Development and 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.