Dr. Kathleen Corriveau &
Dr. Melissa Holt promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure
Assistant Professor in Human Development Kathleen Corriveau and Assistant Professor of Counseling Psychology Melissa Holt have both been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure.
Dr. Corriveau directs the Social Learning Laboratory at the School of Education which seeks to study children’s use of social and cognitive information when learning about the world. Her research focuses on social and cognitive development in childhood, with a specific focus on how children decide what people and what information are trustworthy sources.
Most recently, Dr. Corriveau was awarded a $1 million CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation to research how adults might optimize their responses to inquiries from children, specifically in relation to science.
“There is a general belief that preschoolers learn best by exploring the world around them rather than being told the answer. For this reason, many inquiry based settings, such as preschools and museums, highlight that the child should be guiding the inquiry rather than the adult,” Dr. Corriveau explained. “Yet, often there are critical concepts that require an adult explanation without firsthand evidence – and there are many different ways that the adult could provide this explanation.”
Previously, Dr. Corriveau was selected as a 2015-16 Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow by the National Academy of Education, as well as awarded the prestigious Peter Paul Professorship at Boston University.
Dr. Melissa Holt co-founded the Social Adjustment & Bullying Prevention Laboratory, along with Dr. Jennifer Greif Green. Researchers at the lab conduct research and outreach to better understand and promote healthy social and emotional adjustment among children in school. Dr. Holt’s research focuses on youth experiences with violence in the home, school, and community, with a particular emphasis on bullying. More specifically, she studies the extent to which victimization exposures individually and cumulatively affect youth functioning in a range of domains, for example mental health and substance use.
Dr. Holt is the co-PI on a National Institutes of Justice Grant that examines long-term effects of participation in Second Step – a social-emotional development program – on high school functioning (e.g., engagement in violence; risk taking behaviors).
Dr. Holt was elected Vice President of Division E (Counseling and Human Development) for the American Educational Research Association for a 3-year term (2016-2019). In addition, she received an American Educational Research Association Division E Distinguished Research Award for her article, Sexual Risk Taking and Bullying Among Adolescents, published in Pediatrics. Further, she was awarded the Excellence in Graduate Advising Award from the School of Education in 2016.
Both Dr. Corriveau and Dr. Holt joined the School of Education in 2011.
