Recently announced awards to CSC faculty

The CSC is happy to share that the following awards were recently presented:

Koraly Perez-Edgar, Professor of Psychology, was named McCourtney Professor of Child Studies in recognition of exceptional scholarship and service.

Dr. Perez-Edgar received her A.B. in psychology from Dartmouth College and her M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University. She joined Penn State in 2011 and since that time has held several academic positions, such as: McCourtney Family Early Career Professor in Psychology and Liberal Arts Professor. Her research focuses on the relationship between temperament and psychopathology. In particular, she examines how individual differences in attention can work to ameliorate or exacerbate early temperament traits.

Dawn Witherspoon, Associate Professor of Psychology, was named a McCourtney Early Career Professor of Psychology. This award honors a promising untenured or recently tenured faculty member in the College of the Liberal Arts and includes support for the faculty member’s research and teaching program.

Dr. Witherspoon completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Center for Developmental Science and in the Department of Psychology’s Black Child Training Grant Program. She received her doctorate in Community Psychology from New York University, with a quantitative minor and developmental concentration. Her research focuses on how context shapes adolescent development, in particular, on neighborhood, school, and family factors that affect adolescents’ socioemotional and academic adjustment. In addition, she examines how race, ethnicity, and other cultural attributes interact with contextual characteristics to influence adolescent outcomes.

Penn State’s Philanthropists of the Year in 2013, Tracy (’65 English) and Ted McCourtney, generously provided the funding for these professorships. The McCourtneys have been leading benefactors to the College of the Liberal Arts for many years.

Click here to read the Penn State News article.