I received my Ph.D. in Human Development from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Earlier in my career, I received my M.S. & Specialist in School Psychology from the University of Wisconsin and then worked for 2 years as a psychologist in a K-12 private school in Kuwait.

The focus of my research is how families affect child and adolescent development. Past studies have focused on characteristics of children such as children's temperament, characteristics of parents such as education, personality, depression, characteristics of the family system such as marital conflict, and the cultural context of the family with studies focusing on families in Singapore, Taiwan, & immigrant Hmong families in the United States. These studies focused on how these characteristics interacted with or predicted child attachment to the parent, co-parenting, parent scaffolding of children's problem solving, parent warmth, parent behavioral and psychological control. These characteristics and parenting behaviors or family processes predicted such outcomes as children's school behavior, self-regulation in the classroom, emotion regulation, academic achievement, and religiosity, Many of these studies were done with my doctoral students. 

In addition, to mentoring my doctoral students, I enjoy teaching both undergraduate and graduate students. I teach "The Elementary School Child" to undergraduates and "Family Processes and Child/Adolescent Development to graduate students.