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Sara M. Acevedo, Ph.D.

Sara M. Acevedo, Ph.D. is a new Assistant Professor of Disability Studies in the Department of Educational Psychology. She earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology and Social Change from the California Institute of Integral Studies in 2018 and an M.L.A with a concentration in Disability Studies from Temple University in 2012. In 2008, she earned her B.A. in French Linguistics from La Universidad de Salamanca in Spain. The primary focus of her research program is on how the development of grassroots disability identity formations can, and indeed does generate, transformative social change. She is interested in further identifying ways in which identity formation processes manifest at the productive intersection of spatiality, self-governance, and transgressive discourse. This research program is informed critical disability studies scholarship, by social movement literature, feminist philosophy and world feminisms, human geography and the geographies of disability, activist anthropology, disability studies in anthropology, critical sociology, and postmodern theory.

Allison Farrell, Ph.D.

Allison Farrell, Ph.D. is a new Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota and her undergraduate degree from Haverford College. Her research interests uses a biopsychosocial approach to understand how close relationships, particularly parent-child and romantic relationships, affect stress and physical health (e.g., the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and inflammatory processes).  She has a number of peer-reviewed articles, with her most recent publication being “Towards a mechanistic understanding of links between close relationships and health” in Current Directions in Psychological Science.

Jeffrey Hunger, Ph.D.

Jeffrey Hunger, Ph.D is a new Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology. He earned his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbra in 2017, and his M.A. in Psychological Research from California State University, Fullerton in 2011, as well as his B.A. in Psychology from the University of Minnesota in 2009. His research is rooted in both the social psychology of stigma and an understanding of the psychobiological pathways linking social stress and health. He has bridged these areas of expertise to create a program of theoretical and empirical work dedicated to understanding and ultimately improving the health of stigmatized populations. His most recent peer-reviewed publication is titled “"An Evidence-Based Rationale for Adopting Weight-Inclusive Health Policy” in  Social Issues and Policy Review.

Racheal Rothrock, Ph.D.

Racheal Rothrock, Ph.D. joined Miami as a Heanon Wilkins Fellow in August 2018 and will begin her Assistant Professor appointment in the Department of Teaching, Curriculum, and Educational Inquiry starting in August 2020. She earned her Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin in 2017 and 2010 respectively and her B.A. from St. Edward’s University in 2007. Her dissertation, "Making meaning of community: a multi-case study of three urban, middle-school teachers" stemmed from a long trajectory, beginning with early opportunities to engage in scholarly activities with established research communities and researchers around critical theory and culturally relevant pedagogy. She continues to do work around community and critical pedagogies and her most recent project considers how equity-oriented school leaders influence teacher's professional practices. Her most recent publication is titled “Constructing a High-Stakes Community in the Classroom: A Case Study of One Urban, Middle-School Teacher” in The Educational Forum.

Sujay Sabnis, Ph.D.

Sujay Sabnis, Ph.D. is a new Assistant Professor of the School Psychology Program in the Department of Education. He earned his Ph.D. in School Psychology from the University of South Florida in 2019, and his M.S. in Clinical Psychology from Loyola University Maryland in 2013. His research interests include critical race theory, critical qualitative methodologies, consultation, and policy analysis in K-12 public education. His most recent publication is titled “RTI, equity, and the return to the status quo: Implications for consultants” in a special issue of Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation.

PRIMED for Action is a partnership in which Miami faculty [Cameron Hay-Rollins (Anthropology), Ann Elizabeth Armstrong (Theater), and Paul Flaspohler (Psychology)] are working with The Butler County Health Department to address the causes and consequences of infant mortality in Butler County. Ohio is one of the worst states for infant mortality and the worst state for Black, non-Hispanic infant mortality. Using Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) and Digital Story Telling, Miami faculty are partnering with community members to build a context for trust and open dialogue to assure the voices of African American at-risk mothers are heard, allowing them to contribute actively in the design of the research and interventions that impact them. This fall, the PRIMED team has completed several meetings and workshops involving community members and health workers in order to develop digital stories that illustrate the perspectives, concerns, and experiences of the community members. With assistance from ¾Ã¾ÃÈÈÊÓƵs in GHS 301, these stories have been developed with the intention of using them to inform development of strategies to address infant mortality.

Tell me about your research.

I have a Ph.D. in theater but I’m focusing on applied theatre that uses artistic expression in interdisciplinary contexts. For the past 10 years, I have worked as the co-director of the “Finding Freedom Summer Project,”. I created a walking tour of Western College campus that explores the events that occurred on this site while activists trained for Freedom Summer in 1964. After creating the walking tour, I decided to create a location-based app that would create a similar experience to the walking tour. The app is similar to Pokémon Go in that depending on where the user is located, different interactive stories will appear. The app is called ARIS and available free to anyone, and can be found at fsapp.lib.miamioh.edu. Once in the app you select “nearby” and “Freedom Summer.”

How did you become interested in research in the area of infant mortality?

Infant mortality in the African American community in Butler County is among the highest in all of Ohio. There is a huge disconnect in social services, such as health education. Instead of providing an environment in which faculty from ¾Ã¾ÃÈÈÊÓƵ would come in and teach the members of the community, we wanted to create an environment where members of the community could teach each other. We thought artistic communication would be the perfect vehicle for this, and that is how I became involved. We are going to use Digital Storytelling to communicate the stories of those living in Butler County who may be part of an at-risk community or who have lost a baby. We have completed two of the three workshops where we are working with nine community members.

Can you tell me about the workshops?

There will be three workshops in total, and we have completed two of the three. For the first workshop, our goal was to build trust and introduce the participants to the project’s method. To build rapport, the members participated in a short Digital Storytelling Project in which the participants were instructed to photograph themselves using any part of their bodies except their face. The goal of this activity was for the members to be creative in order to express their stories. After making the pictures, the members would create a caption explaining their picture. The second workshop involved the members participating in a “Story Circle”. For this activity, each member was given four minutes to tell his or her story. Stories included personal memories of oppression, parents, etc. After this activity, the members began to brainstorm scripts for the Digital Storytelling Project for the community. In the third workshop, the stories will be created with the goal of the participants eventually replicating these workshops with other members of the community.

What work are you most proud of?

I was very proud of sustaining the walking tour for 10 years, but I am also very proud of this work. I think these projects are a culmination of speaking at structural racism, and this work with infant mortality facilitates the artistic communication of leaders in the community allowing them to reach out to others in that same community.

1. Who started and how many members did it have and what department?
2. Tricia Callahan, Miami’s Director of grant Proposal Development in OARS is a Miami graduate who majored in Psychology. ~Dr. Christopher Wolfe
3. I'm currently the principal investigator of a K23 grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse titled "Text Message Support to Prevent Smoking Relapse in Community Treatment Settings." Did you know that our Research Compliance Office has worked with us and is now set up to enable investigators to register clinical trials at clinicaltrials.gov? ~Dr. Joshua Magee
4. One of the newest honorary CHDLT member is April Smith’s four-month-old son named Torsten Thomas.
5. I have just gone through the process of putting the entire Prekindergarten Associate degree online (beginning this semester). ~Dr. Tracey Hoffman

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• Bergen, D., Schroer, J., & Woodin, M. (2018) Brain research in education and the social sciences: Implications for research, parenting, and future society. New York: Routledge.
• Bonham V., Umeh N., Cunningham B., Abdallah K., Sellers, S. L., and Cooper L. 2017. Primary care physicians’ collection, comfort, and use of race and ethnicity in clinical practice in the United States. Health Equity. 1(1): 118–126.
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• Bryan, N. (2018). Shaking the 'bad boys': Troubling the criminalization of Black boys' childhood play, hegemonic White masculinity and femininity, and the 'school playground-to-prison pipeline' Race, Ethnicity, and Education, DOI: 10.1080/13613324.2018.1512483.
• Bryan, N. & Jett, C. (2018).“Playing School”: Creating possibilities to inspire future Black male teachers through culturally relevant play. Journal of Multicultural Education, Vol. 12(2), 99-110.
• Budd, K. M., Van Gundy, A., Ward, R. M., & Muschert, G. W. (2019). Sexual assault campus climate surveys: Insights from the first wave. Dignity: A Journal on Sexual Exploitation and Violence.  
• Ellison, S., Anderson, A., & Aronson, B., & Clauson, C. (2018). From Objects to Subjects: Repositioning Teachers as Policy Actors Doing Policy Work. Teaching and Teacher Education, 74, 157-169.
• Emery, P., Yezierski, E. J., & Page, R. C. (2019). Guided inquiry activity linking thermodynamic parameters of protein unfolding to structure using differential scanning fluorimetry data in the biophysical chemistry classroom. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education. 47(1), 67-75doi.org/10.1002/bmb.21198
• Emerson, Megan, Hudgens, Michelle, Barners, Allison, Hiller, Elizabeth, Robison, Debora, Kipp, Roger, Bradshaw, Ursula, Siegel, Robert.  (2017) Small Prizes Increased Plain Milk and Vegetable Selection by Elementary School Children without Adversely Affecting Total Milk Purchase. Beverages, March 2017 DOI:10.3390/beverages3010014
• Flocke, S.A., Ohri-Vachispati, P., Shon, E.J., Trapl, E.S., Borawski, E., Matlack, K., & Freedman, D.A. (2017). Developing multidimensional measures of healthy food access among low-income adults in Cleveland Ohio. Public Health Nutrition, 20 (16), 2859-2868.
• Forney, J., Schwendler, T., & Ward, R. M. (2019). Accounting for negative affect and perfectionism in peer influences on disordered eating behaviors: A social network analysis. Appetite, 137, 236-243.
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• Goldberg, A. E., & Kuvalanka, K. A. (2018). Navigating identity development and community belonging when “there are only two boxes to check:” An exploratory study of nonbinary trans college ¾Ã¾ÃÈÈÊÓƵs. Journal of LGBT Youth, 15, 106-131.
• Goldberg, A. E., Kuvalanka, K. A., Budge, S., Smith, J., & Benz, M. (in press). Mental health and health care experiences of transgender undergraduate and graduate ¾Ã¾ÃÈÈÊÓƵs: A mixed methods study. The Counseling Psychologist.
• Herrington, D. G., Sweeder, R. D., Daubenmire, P. L., Bauer, C. F., Bretz, S. L., Bunce, D. M., Carmel, J H., Cole, R., DeKorver, B. K., Kelly, R. M., Lewis, S. E., Oliver-Hoyo, M., Ryan, S. A., Stains, M., Towns., M. H., & Yezierski, E. J. (2019). Supporting the Growth and Impact of the Chemistry-Education-Research Community. Journal of Chemical Education, ASAP. 10.1021/acs.jchemed.8b00823
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• James, A. & Ward, R.M. (2019). Temporal relation between youths’ perceived spirituality and indicators of positive development. Journal of Research on Adolescence.
• Kalomiris, A. E., Phelps, R. A., & Kiel, E. J. (in press). The relation between specific parenting behaviors and toddlers’ early anxious behaviors is moderated by toddler cortisol reactivity. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology.
• Kazimierczuk, F., Geller, K., Sellers, S. L., Baszile, D., and Smith-Shockley, M. 2018. African American Women and Obesity through the Prism of Race. Health Education & Behavior. 45(3): 371-380.
• Kiel, E. J., Price, N. N., & Premo, J. E. (in press). Maternal comforting behavior, toddlers’ dysregulated fear, and toddlers’ emotion regulatory behaviors. Emotion.
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• Kilpatrick, K., Maras, M., Brann, K., & Kilgus, K. (in press). Universal screening for social, emotional, and behavioral risk in ¾Ã¾ÃÈÈÊÓƵs: Risk stability over time and its implications for screening procedures. School Psychology Review.
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• Roberts, A., de Schutter, B., Franks, K., & Radina, M. E. (2018). Older adults’ experiences with virtual reality: Anticipated usefulness and the importance of preferences. Clinical Gerontologist. 
• Rohten, B., Sellers, J., Charron, E., Paul, N., & Radina, M. (accepted). Sexual activity after treatment for head and neck cancer: the lived experience of survivors. Cancer Nursing Practice.
• Sarfan, L. D., Clerkin, E. M., Teachman, B. B., & Smith, A. R. Do thoughts about dieting matter? Testing the relationship between thoughts about dieting, body shape concerns, and state self-esteem. (in press). Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry.
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