Ph.D. Alumni

CJ Eubanks Fleming, Ph.D. ’14
Assistant Professor of Psychology, Elon University, North Carolina

Dr. Fleming is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Elon University, where she teaches Introduction to Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, Mental Illness in Film, and Introduction to Clinical Psychology.  Her current research areas include couples and relationship issues, treatment engagement and help-seeking behavior for mental health concerns, and understanding risks for and effects of specific psychological conditions such as posttraumatic stress disorder and substance use disorder.  She and her students have recently completed several projects focused on topics such as help-seeking after sexual assault on campus and help-seeking for anxiety both in-person and through the use of mobile applications.

Melinda Ippolito Morrill, Ph.D. ’14
Research Fellow, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Morrill is a Research Fellow on a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award T32 award from the Stuart T. Hauser Clinical Research Training Program in Biological and Social/Developmental Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She currently works in the Laboratory of Adult Development where she focuses on the role of childhood adversity in later life aging as part of a large National Institute of Health grant. Morrill’s research interests include investigating preventative family interventions to interrupt the intergenerational transmission of trauma, resulting in improved biopsychosocial functioning for future generations. She has authored and co-authored numerous peer-reviewed papers, book chapters and abstracts, and has been on the editorial board and served as an ad hoc reviewer for multiple family-focused academic journals. Morrill is also a member of the Perinatal Mental Health Working Group at the Commonwealth Research Center of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She lives in Boston with her husband and two children.

Jordan Downing, Ph.D. ’13
Assistant Director, Counseling and Wellness Center, Massachusetts College of Art and Design

Dr. Downing is the Assistant Director of the Counseling and Wellness Center at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She is broadly interested in how gender, sexual orientation, race, and other socio-cultural factors shape individual and family development. She is particularly interested in understanding how experiences of marginalization and discrimination impact identity formation and mental health.

Aaron Krasnow Ph.D. ’03
Associate Vice President and Director of Health and Counseling services, Arizona State University (ASU)

Dr. Krasnow is Associate Vice President and Director of Arizona State University’s (ASU) Health and Counseling services. In this role he provides administrative leadership for the 6 Health Service clinics and 4 Counseling Service clinics across ASU’s 4 campus locations. Dr. Krasnow began his tenure at Arizona State University in 2003 as a staff psychologist at ASU Counseling. In total, the clinics at ASU serve over 24,000 students per year with over 65,000 visits in primary care, urgent care, neurology, women’s health, rheumatology, occupational health, sports medicine for Division I athletes and club sports, pandemic disease prevention, acupuncture, chiropractic, massage, individual and group psychotherapy, psychoeducational workshops, suicide prevention, and behavioral risk management.

He has served in a number of capacities in various departments at ASU, including clinical director, Dean of Students (Polytechnic Campus), and now as Associate Vice President. He is also ASU’s HIPAA privacy officer, an Arizona-licensed Clinical Psychologist, and has been an instructor in ASU’s Fulton Colleges of Engineering and Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. He has consulted and presented nationally on topics such as student service best practice, clinic management, suicide prevention, quality improvement, and innovation. He is also the former Chair of the American Psychological Association, Division 17 Section on College and University Counseling Centers. He credits the variance in his career to a passion for supporting educational opportunity and providing solutions to real-world questions that affect our communities. His states that his passion for education, the skills and abilities to make positive change, and the willingness to challenge the status quo were nurtured primarily during his years as a graduate student at Clark.

Achu Alexander, Ph.D. ’20
Assistant Professor of Psychology, Anna Maria College, Paxton, Massachusetts

Achu completed her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology in June 2020 under the guidance of Dr. Jeffrey Jensen Arnett. She completed her B.Sc. Psychology from Women’s Christian College and M.A. Applied Psychology from University of Delhi, India. Her research interests are two-fold: (a) identity development of emerging adults, and (b) emerging adult student learning. Her mixed-methods dissertation adopted a cultural lens by focusing on the career engagement of graduating college seniors in preparation for their post-college lives in two contexts, India and the United States. During her doctoral studies, she taught at various institutions within the Colleges of Worcester Consortium such as Clark University, Quinsigamond Community College, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Anna Maria College, Paxton, Massachusetts.

Juan Zhong, Ph.D. ’14
Adjunct Professor

Dr. Zhong is an Adjunct Professor, teaching statistics and research methods. She recently submitted a manuscript “Why go out?” The Leaving Home Decisions of Chinese Migrant Women Workers”.

Jessica McKenzie, Ph.D. ’14
Assistant Professor, California State University, Fresno

Dr. McKenzie is Assistant Professor of Child and Family Science at California State University, Fresno, where she teaches courses on youth development and family relationships in multicultural settings. Her research investigates how culture structures the life course, and how youth and families psychologically negotiate cultural change. Dr. McKenzie engages in longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork in northern Thailand, where she examines the practices and perspectives of parent-child dyads across contexts of globalization. Students in her Human Development and Culture Research Lab are currently investigating the moral frameworks that guide adolescents in variously globalized Thai communities, as well as how media use reshapes cultural socialization processes in urban Thai settings. More information on her research and publications can be found here.

Kathryn Frazier, Ph.D. ’15
Assistant Professor of Psychology, Worcester State University

Kathryn is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Worcester State University in Worcester, Massachusetts where she teaches classes such as Introduction to Psychology, Developmental Psychology and Psychology of Adolescence. She has previously served as a Lecturer of Psychology at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts and was the 2015-2016 Visiting Scholar in the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at Northeastern. Kathryn’s research is centered on women’s experiences of violence and vulnerability, and also on contemporary feminisms and women’s experiences of empowerment. She has published her work in a number of outlets including a book chapter in the Annals of Cultural Psychology and empirical articles in Feminism & Psychology, and Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science.

Nida Jamshed, Ph.D. ’24
Assistant Professor of Social Psychology, Texas A&M University

Dr. Jamshed is an Assistant Professor of Social Psychology at Texas A&M International University where she teaches social psychology and research methods courses. Her research interests lie in the intersection of Social and Political Psychology. Her scholarship revolves around understanding social psychological antecedents for resistance/collective action among minority groups in repressive and violent contexts. Moreover, in what ways oppressed group members respond to their experiences of collective victimization and norms around resistance.  She actively publishes articles in well reputed psychology journals.

Maggie Campbell Obaid, Ph.D. ‘15
Associate Professor of Psychology, Framingham State University

Maggie Campbell Obaid is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Framingham State University, where she teaches a variety of classes, including Political Psychology and Psychology of Morality. She completed her PhD in Social Psychology with Dr. Johanna Vollhardt in 2015. She has a range of research interests, focusing primarily on issues related to peace, violence, and social responsibility. She is also a founding member of the MotherScholar Collective, an interdisciplinary group focused on empowering academic mothers+ to share their voices through collaborative and inclusive research.

Mukadder Okuyan, Ph.D. ’20
Assistant Professor, Bahcesehir University in Istanbul, Turkey

Dr. Mukadder Okuyan is an Assistant Professor at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul, Turkey, where she teaches Social Psychology and Statistics. She studies how the groups people belong to influence their thoughts and behaviors, with a focus on how social hierarchies shape perceptions of discrimination and social change. Recently, her research has centered on why advantaged groups, like ethnic majorities and men, claim discrimination. Dr. Okuyan conducts research in countries like Turkey, the USA, and Germany, using both quantitative and qualitative methods to explore these topics. Her research has appeared in many different social psychology journals, including Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, Feminism & Psychology, and Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology.

Michelle Sinayobye Twali, Ph.D. ’21
Assistant Professor of Applied Psychology, New York University

Michelle Twali is an Assistant Professor of Applied Psychology at New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development. She completed her PhD in Social Psychology with Dr. Johanna Vollhardt in 2021. Prior to joining NYU as an Assistant Professor, she was a Provost Postdoctoral Research Fellow at NYU (2022-2024) and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with Innovation for Poverty Action & Princeton University (2021-2022). Her research program is motivated by her commitment to using research as a tool to understand and address real-world social issues. She uses multiple methods to examine: 1) how historical and sociopolitical contexts shape the psychological needs (e.g., acknowledgment, power) that arise for members of groups targeted by collective violence and oppression, 2) the meanings that victim groups construct about their experiences of historical and current collective violence (i.e., collective victim beliefs), 3) how social psychological theories can be leveraged to develop and evaluate context-relevant interventions among victims of collective violence (e.g., refugees).