Center for Families

Faculty Theme Leaders

Jim Elicker, associate professor of developmental studies
Theme Area: Families Nurturing Young Children

Melissa Franks, assistant professor of family studies
Theme Area: Families Facing Challenges

Cleveland Shields, associate professor of marriage and family therapy
Theme Area: Families Facing Challenges
 

Name	College/School/Department	e-Mail
Christopher R. Agnew	Psychological Sciences	agnew@purdue.edu
Research Interests: interpersonal relations - including commitment processes, dissolution processes, and social network interactions and influence; and social psychological dimensions of health behaviors.
Ximena Arriaga	Psychological Sciences	arriaga@purdue.edu
Research Interests: relationship commitment and stability; partner violence; and intervention research with Latino families.
Thomas Berndt	Psychological Sciences	berndt@purdue.edu
Research Interests: the development of friendships during childhood and adolescence, and the effects of friendships on development; the processes and outcomes of peer influence; and moral judgments and reasoning about social relationships.
Pat Boling	Political Science	boling@purdue.edu
Research Interests: how problems rooted in private life (e.g., the family, sexuality, reproductive matters, intimate relationships) come to be understood as political issues.
Brant Burleson	Communication	brantb@purdue.edu
Research Interests: supportive forms of communication (such as comforting) and their effects on varied forms of well-being; how people both produce and process supportive messages; communication skill acquisition and development; the effects of communication skills on relationship outcomes; and the role of emotion in communication and relationships.
Patrice Buzzanell	Communication	buzzanel@purdue.edu
Research Interests: organizational communication with specific interests in career, leadership, and work-life processes.
Mia Smith Bynum	Psychological Sciences	msbynum@psych.purdue.edu
Research Interests: family processes and mental health in ethnic minority families, racial identity.
Jennifer Dobbs	Child Development and Family Studies	jdobbs@purdue.edu
Research Interests: emergent literacy; emergent numeracy; preschool social-emotional development; preschool learning and behavior; and school and home-based interventions.
Nancy Edwards	School of Nursing	edwardsn@purdue.edu
Research Interests: adult nursing; dementia; neuroprogressive diseases; animal assisted therapy.
Jim Elicker	Child Development and Family Studies	elickerj@purdue.edu
Research Interests: early social-emotional development; child care quality; early childhood program evaluation; caregiver-child relationships; birth-to-three professional development.
Ken Ferraro	Sociology	ferraro@purdue.edu
Research Interests: aging;  health;  quantitative methods.
Melissa Franks	Child Development and Family Studies	mmfranks@purdue.edu
Research Interests: aging families; marriage and health; health behaviors; and chronic illness management.
Viktor Gecas	Sociology	vgecas@purdue.edu
Research Interests: social pychology; family sociology; and life course.
Elizabeth Hoffman	Sociology	ehoffman@purdue.edu
Research Interests: law and society; work and organizations; sex and gender; alternative dispute resolution; legal consciousness; workplace ideologies; and emotional labor.
Jakob Jensen	Communication	jdjensen@purdue.edu
Research Interests: mass communication to change health attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.
Xinran Lehto	Hospitality and Tourism Management	xinran@purdue.edu
Research Interests: tourism; cross-cultural and cross-cohort consumer behavior, decision making, and marketing communication strategies.
Sandra Liu	Consumer Sciences and Retailing	liuss@purdue.edu
Research Interests: consumerism in healthcare delivery; sales management in a knowledge era; customer capital and structural capital in healthcare industry; knowledge mangement and organizational learning; and strategic marketing issues in income generation activities in healthcare.
JoAnn Miller	Sociology	jlmiller@purdue.edu
Research Interests: sociology of law; gender and law; and family violence.
Timothy Owens	Sociology	towens@purdue.edu
Research Interests: social psychology - identity and self-esteem; sociology of mental health; life course contexts, development, and transitions; and sociology of youth.
Jungkun Park	Consumer Sciences and Retailing	park4@purdue.edu
Bob Perrucci	Sociology	perruccir@purdue.edu
Research Interests: stratification, organizations, work, social networks, and political economy.
JoAnn Phillion	Curriculum and Instruction	phillion@purdue.edu
Research Interests: using narrative inquiry to study multicultural education in diverse school contexts - immigrant and ESL issues, programs that foster parental involvement in schools, and contributions minority teachers make to schools and education.
Germán Posada	Child Development and Family Studies	gposada@purdue.edu
Research Interests: child-mother attachment relationships; secure base phenomenon; attachment representations; caregiving and socialization outcomes; marital relationship and attachment; cross-cultural issues in attachment research.
Felicia Roberts	Communication	froberts@purdue.edu
Research Interests: verbal and non-verbal practices that construct everyday and institutional life - language development; parent-child interaction; language attitudes; perception of non-standard speakers; and language variation and change.
Rona Schwarz	Military Family Research Institute	ronaschw@purdue.edu
Cleveland Shields	Child Development and Family Studies	cgshields@purdue.edu
Research Interests: families and health; healthcare; family interventions in health; patient-centered care; and  couples and cancer.
Seung-Hee Son	Child Development and Family Studies	seunghee@purdue.edu
Research Interests: development of early literacy; language and social skills; early intervention; home and preschool learning; low-income children; research methods and cross-cultural study.
Glenn Sparks	Communication	gsparks@purdue.edu
Research Interests:  effects of mass media; the general impact of electronic media on interpersonal relationships and close connections.
William Spencer	Sociology	jspencer@purdue.edu
Research Interests: deviance and social control; criminology and delinquency; sociolinguistics; social psychology.
Harry Targ	Political Science	targ@purdue.edu
Research Interests: American politics; American labor; international relations.
Volker Thomas	Child Development and Family Studies	thomasv@purdue.edu
Research Interests: family therapy with children; intervention research for childhood and adolescent disorders; gender and multicultural perspectives in couple and family therapy; supervision of couple and family therapy; family assessment; interventions with economically disadvantaged families.
Howard Weiss	Psychological Sciences	weissh@purdue.edu
Research Interests: immediate, episodic experiences of people while at work.
Laurel Weldon	Political Sciences	weldons@purdue.edu
Research Interests:  social structures and public policy implications of patterns of group inequality for democratic politics and policy making; political impact of social movements and specialized bureaucratic agencies.
Shawn Whiteman	Child Development and Family Studies	sdwhitem@purdue.edu
Research Interests: sibling relationships; family relationship processes; child effects on family dynamics; family gender dynamics; family methods; middle childhood; adolescence; emerging adulthood.
Sharon Wilkerson	School of Nursing	swilkers@purdue.edu
Research Interests: families coping with chronic conditions;  premature infant hearing; and developmental care in the NICU.
Steve Wilson	Communication	wilson25@purdue.edu
Research Interests: intersections between interpersonal communication and social influence - how individuals manage multiple, conflicting goals when trying to influence others at home, in the classroom, or at work.