Sarah Berger (she/her)
Campus: College of Staten Island
Email: sarah.berger@csi.cuny.edu
Website: https://csichildlab.wixsite.com/csichildlab
Advisee(s): Aaron DeMasi, Michele Goncalves Maia, Sapir Elimalliah (w. Jen Wagner)
Research: My students and I study the development of infants’ problem-solving skills in the context of locomotion. We use pre- and full-term infants’ motor behaviors to gain insight into underlying cognitive processes. In another program of research, we ask about the role of the quality of sleep on infants’ learning; about the importance of timing of napping relative to learning; and the contributions of day and night sleep to infants’ learning. We also study the relation between the onset of new motor skill and quality of sleep in infancy.
Teaching: Infancy; Motor Development; Experimental Psychology: Child Development
Personal: I am a regular runner of 5Ks, an avid knitter, and love to go on food & cultural adventures around Brooklyn with my husband and 2 sons (ages 16 and 6).
Jennifer Drake (she/her)
Campus: Brooklyn College
Email: jdrake@brooklyn.cuny.edu
Website: www.jenniferedrake.com
Advisee(s): Ellie Grossman (DP) and Katie Papazian (CLD)
Research: My research program focuses on the psychology of the visual arts. In one line of research, I examine the emotional benefits of the arts for children and adults. In a second line of research, I study the cognitive and perceptual processes underlying graphic representation in artistically gifted children and adult artists.
Teaching: Psychological Statistics and Psychology of the Arts
Personal: I enjoy yoga, spending time in nature, and consuming as much visual art, dance, and musical theatre as possible.
Kristen Gillespie-Lynch (she/her)
Campus: College of Staten Island
Email: kristen.gillespie@csi.cuny.edu
Website: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kristen-Gillespie-Lynch
Advisee(s): Eliana Grossman (Secondary advisor with Jen Drake as primary)
Research: Using a multi-method and primarily participatory approach, we aim to understand and transform conceptions of autism cross-culturally while developing supports to help autistic people thrive. We examine cultural, interpersonal, and personal factors that influence the identity development and academic skills (e.g., writing and computational thinking) of neurodivergent young people to develop and evaluate programming to help autistic teenagers and college students succeed in college and the workforce.
Teaching: Director Advanced Certificate Program in ASD at CSI; Teach courses about autism and neurodiversity; Research Methods
Personal: I love to hike, read fiction and New Yorker articles, bike, scour reviews to find exciting films and restaurants, experience theatre, art and music (often on repeat), talk with idiosyncratic people, ride boats, and travel to foreign countries and national parks.
Lana Karasik (she/her)
Campus: College of Staten Island
Email: lana.karasik@csi.cuny.edu
Website: www.karasiklab.org
Advisee(s): Melda Kahraman (with Anna Stetsenko); Amruta Wagh
Research: My research program focuses on the social and cultural factors that shape infant development. We study the context of infant motor development—how cultural beliefs, expectations and childrearing practices affect when infants acquire sitting, crawling, and walking. We also study the developmental cascade of motor development—how emerging motor skills shape infants’ interactions and learning. To answer these questions, we collect data from caregivers using surveys, interviews, and observational measures and test infants in standard tasks and naturalistic assessments. We conduct our studies in the U.S. and abroad.
Teaching: Developmental Psychology; Infancy; Motor Development
Personal: I love to travel, read, and bicycling in Florida
Yana Kuchirko (she/her/hers)
Campus: Brooklyn College
Email: yana.kuchirko@brooklyn.cuny.edu
Website: www.culturelabbc.com
Advisee(s): Kristina Arevalo, Jahnavi de Sousa, Tashiya Hunter (in collaboration with Dr. Erika Niwa)
Research: My interests lie primarily in sociocultural and ecological contexts of child development, with a focus on how children and youth are socialized at the intersections of culture, ethnicity/race, and gender across the early years of life in the context of everyday settings. My work, which is continuously shaped by my students’ interests, is grounded in theories and scholarship across disciplines, with an emphasis on critical perspectives, macro-level ideologies and narratives that shape socialization of children and youth, and social constructions of childhood.
Teaching: Psychology of Gender; Cultural Psychology; Developmental Psychology; Research Proposal
Personal: I really enjoy biking all around the five boroughs, doing crossfit, reading novels, finding hidden culinary gems in NYC, and making pasta by hand!
Jake Shane (he/him/his)
Campus: Brooklyn College
Email: jshane@brooklyn.cuny.edu
Website: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=p28nLPcAAAAJ
Advisee(s):
Research: My research examines how motivation and opportunity direct and reflect individuals’ development across the life span. I am particularly interested in the dynamic relationships between individuals’ broader beliefs about society, their beliefs about themselves, and their motivational commitment to central life goals.
Teaching: Developmental Psychology; Motivation
Personal:
Virginia Valian (any)
Campus: Hunter College
Email: vvalian@gc.cuny.edu
Website: virginiavalian.org
Advisee(s): Qihui Xu, Emilia Ezrina, Xiaomeng Ma, Andre Eliatamby
Research: Virginia Valian is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Hunter College – CUNY, and is a member of the doctoral faculties of Psychology, Linguistics, and Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences at the CUNY Graduate Center. She directs the Language Acquisition Research Center at Hunter College, which studies the acquisition of syntax in young children and the relation between bilingualism and cognition in adults. She is co-founder and director of Hunter’s Gender Equity Project. In her work on gender equity Dr Valian performs research on the reasons behind women’s slow advancement in the professions and proposes remedies for individuals and institutions. She is the author of Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women (1998, MIT Press) and is co-author, with Abigail Stewart, of An Inclusive Academy: Achieving Diversity and Excellence (2018, MIT Press). Dr Valian’s recent work on gender includes an opinion piece on sexual harassment (Nature, 2019), a co-authored policy article on gender in science (Science, 2019), and co-authored empirical papers on the gender of speakers at university colloquia, awards to men and women in academia, and reactions to male and female presidential candidates. Dr Valian speaks to institutions and organizations in Australia, Canada, Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States on improving gender equity in hiring, promotion, and recognition.
Teaching: Social Cognition of Gender; First Language Acquisition; Professional Development; Teaching of Psychology
Personal:
