Rachel Marcus

Rachel Marcus (she/her) is a fifth-year graduate student in the Developmental Psychology program at Penn State. In 2019, she graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in molecular and cellular biology and minor in public policy and the developing child. As an undergraduate, she worked in two psychology labs focused respectively on child and elderly couples’ behavior. Through these experiences, Rachel learned that she was most interested in studying child development and subsequently became a research coordinator piloting the Healthy Brain and Child Development study at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. In addition, she volunteered for the National Hotline for Suicide Prevention. These post-baccalaureate experiences solidified her interest in working with adolescents through a research setting.

Rachel was drawn to Penn State’s Developmental Psychology program because of its emphasis on applied research, collaboration, and top-tier training in quantitative methods. In particular, she was drawn to Dr. Rina D. Eiden’s rich, longitudinal studies of child development from the prenatal period through adolescence. Rachel’s master’s thesis examined developmental pathways from prenatal substance exposure to adolescent substance use, highlighting the protective role of parental monitoring. This project led to interests in broader risk-taking, including both negative risks, such as substance use, and positive risks, such as trying out for school athletic teams or performances. To gain expertise with quantitative methods, Rachel was awarded a Prevention and Methodology Training T32 Fellowship, during which she identified profiles of risk-taking among adolescents and their associations with substance use. Her findings indicated that while adolescents who use substances are relatively consistent in reporting negative risk-taking, they report varying levels of positive risk-taking.

Rachel was additionally awarded an Office of Research and Graduate Studies Dissertation Award to support her independent data collection for her dissertation. Specifically, she will explore how parental autonomy support influences parents’ interactions with their adolescents, and how that in turn impacts adolescent risk-taking. Following her doctoral program, Rachel would like to work as a prevention scientist or quantitative researcher to ensure that research findings move beyond academic institutions to reach the general public, as well as youth and families in need.