Morgan Mannweiler

Morgan Mannweiler is a fourth-year graduate student in the Child Clinical Psychology doctoral program at Penn State. Prior to her studies at Penn State, she attended the University of Florida, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 2017 and a master of education in mental health counseling and a specialist in education in 2019. Morgan’s interest in child development led her to a position at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence as a post-graduate research assistant, which solidified her passion for applied research. Morgan was drawn to Penn State’s clinical program and the opportunity to receive mentorship from Dr. Karen Bierman, as well as the ability to collaborate with the Clinical and Translational Science Institute and the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center.

As a doctoral student, Morgan has collaborated with and received mentorship from a diverse group of faculty across Penn State. In her first two years of the program, she worked with Dr. Bierman and Dr. Lynn Liben to evaluate a prevention program designed to help parents foster their child’s early STEM development during play activities. This past year, Morgan joined the Clinical and Translational Science Institute’s Training Program and transitioned her focus to longitudinal outcomes of a preschool program designed to enhance academic and social emotional school readiness. Her project examined how different profiles of school readiness contribute to academic and social emotional functioning at the end of elementary school. As a fellow in the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center’s Prevention and Methodology Training Program for the 2024-2025 year, and under the mentorship of Dr. Bierman and Dr. Damon Jones, Morgan will expand this work to examine the association between risk factors in early childhood and financial and emotional costs throughout development, as well as factors that buffer early risk.

In the future, Morgan hopes to design and implement prevention programs that promote academic and social emotional competency in early childhood, especially for children raised in lower-resourced communities, and evaluate their impact on developmental trajectories.