School Psychology

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Michael Brachfeld works in Dr. Oscar Barbarin's lab.  He is interested in the role of contextual factors in influencing the development of young children as well as the presence of resiliency in underprivileged children.  He is currently working on a project with Dr. Barbarin which analyzes ways to increase academic motivation for children of color.

mbrachfe@tulane.edu

Patrick Bell works in Dr. Bonnie Nastasi’s lab. His current research interests include using a mixed method approach (focus groups with children, parents, teachers; ethnography; interviews; surveys; etc.) to design psychological interventions in schools. They are partnering with two public schools in New Orleans to use the Participatory, Culture-Specific Intervention Model to promote psychological well-being and determine the impact of improved mental health services on academic outcomes.

pbell1@tulane.edu

Corey Black works with Dr. Courtney Baker. His research interests include the social-emotional development of young children. Specifically, he is interested in community based early interventions aimed at addressing the social-emotional needs of young children.

cblack3@tulane.edu

Amanda Borja works with Dr. Bonnie Nastasi. She is currently part of a project aimed at promoting children's psychological well-being. Her research interests include school-based mental health systems as well as the impact of teacher supports on children's psychological well-being.

aborja1@tulane.edu

Jeffrey Brown works with Dr. Oscar Barbarin, studying the socio-emotional development of young Black boys.  His work focuses on how early environmental variables such as neighborhood quality, maternal characteristics, and school quality interact with cognitive characteristics of the child to shape outcomes over the lifespan.  He is also interested in the interplay between social cognition in Black boys and their proximal environment, especially as it relates to socio-emotional outcomes.

jbrown13@tulane.edu

Berre Burch works with Dr. Stacy Overstreet.  Her research interests include traumatic exposure in youth, focusing particularly on disaster exposure and family violence.  She is currently working on a project examining the cumulative effects of trauma exposure and its impact on mental health, development, and school performance.  She is also interested in policy and system-level interventions aimed at preventing and ameliorating the impact of trauma exposure.

bburch@tulane.edu

Elizabeth Carey works with Dr. Lisa Szechter. Elizabeth is interested in how social interactions during informal learning activities impact child cognitive development. She is particularly interested in how parents and children interact and engage with exhibits at science education centers, and how such interactions can foster curiosity and increase attitudes toward science. 

ecarey@tulane.edu

Heather Henderson works in Dr. Bonnie Nastasi's lab. Heather has a background in special education and her interests include studying the social and behavioral effects of reading difficulties in children and adolescents.  She hopes to use her research to design interventions that combine reading remediation with psychological well-being. 

hhender@tulane.edu

Esther Jean-Baptiste is Florida raised and works with Dr. Barbarin in his Children, Families and Schools lab. She is interested in how different levels of the contextual environment, i.e. culture and parenting,  play into the well-being and development of ethnic minority adolescents. Currently, Esther is working on the  research involving parenting practices on children of color how that may play into academic achievement and responding to children that are disadvantaged in a manner that will allow goal actualization.

ejeanbap@tulane.edu

Katie Jones works with Dr. Enrique Varela. Her research interests include the expression of anxiety and social anxiety in adolescents. Specifically, she would like to examine atypical expression of anxiety, seeking to discover why some individuals attempt to cope with anxiety through acts of aggression rather than isolation as well as the intersection between different types of anxiety and substance use. 

kjones@tulane.edu

Jennifer Maldarelli works with Dr. Jeffrey Lockman. She is interested in studying early child development and exploring how children learn about their environment and come to use different objects as tools. Currently, she is studying the development of writing in young preschool and early elementary school children. She is interested in learning how this information about normative development can be applied to the development of interventions for children who have difficulty acquiring important skills, such as writing. In the future she is interested in studying the development of motor planning in young children.

jmaldare@tulane.edu

Laura Marques works with Dr. Stacy Overstreet. Her research interests include studying the impact of trauma on mental health and school performance. Currently, she is examining the long term impact of Hurricane Katrina on internalizing and externalizing problems. Additionally, her current research examines attention deficits in children with PTSD and the potential for misdiagnosis with ADHD.

lmarques@tulane.edu

Dustin Mars works with both Dr. Laurie O’Brien and Dr. Michael Cunningham. He is interested in understanding trauma and how social variables interplay with its expression, effects, and disclosure. Specifically, he is interested in how group memberships differentially affect children’s experience of trauma. He is currently working on a study exploring how learning about slavery from different points of views affects the learner.

dmars@tulane.edu

Shereen Naser works with Dr. Stacy Overstreet. Her specific research interests include child and adolescent responses to trauma. Currently, she is studying adolescent substance use as a coping mechanism post trauma. Shereen is also interested in school based mental health, and specifically in implimentation of school wide social emotional learning programs.

snaser@tulane.edu

Laura Niditch works in Dr. Enrique Varela's lab studying cultural and familial factors that contribute to the development and maintenance of anxiety in youth. Her research explores relationships between parenting styles, parent psychopathology, youth cognitive processes, and youth anxiety. She is also interested in factors that impact parent-child reporting discrepancies in assessment of child anxiety.

lniditch@tulane.edu

Kristin Scott works with Dr. Oscar Barbarin and is currently examining the diverse factors that influence the academic achievement in boys of color. She is working on a project aimed at promoting the psychological well-being of children through conducting school-based mental health screenings. Her research interests include identifying educational interventions that optimize the academic motivation and achievement levels of ethnically diverse children. She is also interested in examining the cultural and familial factors that influence a child's development and performance in school-based settings.

kscott2@tulane.edu

Alex Sims works with Dr. Stacy Overstreet. Her work centers around children who were/are exposed to trauma.  Her current project explores the effect of trauma exposure on executive functioning and attention, and the extent to which evidence-based cognitive behavioral group therapy mitigates deficits.

asims1@tulane.edu

Allisyn Swift works in Dr. Nastasi's lab conducting research on psychological well-being and developing culturally informed interventions and preventative programs in the New Orleans Recovery School District. Her research interests are in infant mental health and lie at the intersection of race, culture, and trauma in early childhood, especially the 0-3 population.   Currently Allisyn is working on a project attempting to look at the traumatic effects of slavery on African-American discipline practices.

aswift@tulane.edu

Meredith Summerville works with Dr. Bonnie Nastasi, and is interested in building comprehensive school-based mental health services in the city of New Orleans. She has a particular focus on facilitating children's psychological well-being in the context of community violence and ongoing traumatic experiences.

msummerv@tulane.edu

Sara Redahan works with Dr. Jeffery Lockman. She is interested in the cognitive development of infants, toddlers, and very young children. Specifically, she enjoys working with children between the ages of 0-5 years. Currently, she is studying how toddlers develop the ability to plan actions during tool using tasks. She hopes to expand this research into non-normative populations, and her next study will be using eye-tracking technology with young toddlers during free play activities as a comparison study for later research examining children at-risk for Autism.

sredahan@tulane.edu

Jorge Verlenden, a first year doctoral student, works with Dr. Bonni Nastasi, on a school-based project to cultivate psychological well-being.  Jorge is interested in models for early intervention to be used with children at risk for emotional and academic difficulties.  Jorge is also interested in the intersection between school, children and the family and in support structures that can foster healthy relationships within this network. Jorge comes to Tulane after years working in Cairo, Egypt as an intervention specialist for students with specific learning disabilitiesand as an outcomes-based researcher on a USAID-funded educational development project. 

jverlend@tulane.edu

Xzania White works with Dr. Michael Cunningham. She is interested in how environmental and developmental factors influence internalizing and externalizing behaviors to occur in youth. More specifically, she wants to understand how family structure, socioeconomic status, and parenting styles affect the mental development and academic performance of African American adolescents. Xzania is also interested in levels of agression, depression, and stress and their relationship with suicide ideation during adolescence.

xwhite@tulane.edu