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  .   Northwestern University

People

Director
		Dan P. McAdams, Ph.D. Dan P. McAdams is professor of psychology and professor of Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University. Professor McAdams received his BS degree from Valparaiso University in 1976 and his PhD in psychology and social relations from Harvard University in 1979. Honored as a Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence at Northwestern, Professor McAdams teaches courses in Personality Psychology, Adult Development and Aging, Theories of Personality and Development, and the Literatures of Identity and Generativity. Listen to an audio interview with Professor McAdams, "What’s the Difference Between a Conservative and a Liberal?"
Research Assistant Professors
		Regina Lopata Logan, PhD Dr. Logan, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University, has taught at Mundelein College (now Loyola University) in Chicago, where she also served as director of career development. She was director of faculty development and assistant dean for educational services at Northwestern's School of Continuing Studies. Currently, she teaches in the School of Education and Social Policy. Dr. Logan's research and interest areas include gender issues in the expression of generativity, spirituality and wisdom in adulthood, and career/family transitions. She and Dr. McAdams are co-directing an investigation of faith, politics, and life stories. Under the auspices of the Foley Center for the Study of Lives, Dr. McAdams and Dr. Logan are soon to begin a longitudinal study of adulthood. In addition, Dr. Logan has extensive experience in teaching and learning in adulthood.
		Bradley Olson, PhD Bradley D. Olson, PhD, is a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and an advocate supporting a greater national emphasis on health care-based approaches toward alcohol and substance abuse problems. He has published numerous research articles, many on consumer-run recovery homes (e.g., Olson et al., 2002), and has provided congressional testimony, once on the relationship between substance abuse and crime, and again on the feasibility of faith-based initiatives. He is chair of United States Congressman Danny K. Davis’s drugs and substance abuse advisory committee and chairperson of CATCH (Citizens Activated to Change Healthcare). CATCH, in conjunction with Congressman Davis’s office, those in recovery, treatment providers and many others obtained roughly 118,000 signatures from registered voters to get a treatment-on-demand initiative on the Cook County ballot in Illinois. On November 2, 2004, 1.2 million people (76 percent) voted in support of the referendum.
Graduate Students
		Jonathan M. Adler, PhD Beginning in August 2009, Jonathan is now an assistant professor of psychology at Olin College in Needham, Massachusetts. He can be reached via e-mail at jadler@olin.edu. In 2009, Jonathan Adler graduated with a Ph.D. in clinical and personality psychology from Northwestern University. He received a bachelor’s degree in psychology, summa cum laude, from Bates College. His research focuses on the interface between adult development and clinical psychology. Broadly conceived, his research interests revolve around the question of how self and identity processes operate as mechanisms of change over time in adulthood. Specifically, he is focused on how these processes influence important life outcomes, including mental health, personality maturity, and the process and outcome of psychotherapy treatment. As such, he has used Dr. McAdams’s narrative theory of personality and its associated methodologies to study issues of clinical importance. In the past, he has looked at the mental health correlates of negative explanatory styles in the life story. His current work is primarily focused on the ways in which people reconstruct their experiences in psychotherapy, with special attention to those narratives that accompany optimal functioning. His dissertation followed a group of outpatient psychotherapy clients over the first 12 sessions of treatment and assessed changes in their personal narratives alongside changes in their symptoms.
		Michelle Albaugh Michelle Albaugh is a doctoral candidate in the Human Development and Social Policy program in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. She received a bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, from DePaul University in music in 1994. Her research thus far has centered on the intersection of personal faith and political ideology. She has collaborated with Professor Dan McAdams, using his narrative theory of personality and associated methodologies to study how committed Christians, politically liberal and conservative, differ from each other. Her interests include religious identity, religious trends in American society and culture, charismatic/transformational leadership, leadership in religious organizations, qualitative and narrative methods, and a variety of quantitative methods.
		Keith Cox Keith Cox is a doctoral student in the clinical and personality program at Northwestern University. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Georgia. He earned a master's degree in religious studies from the University of Virginia, where he studied the intersection of religion and psychology, especially positive psychology. His current research in the Foley lab has two main foci: self-narratives and positive psychology.
		Brady Jones Brady Jones is a doctoral student in the Human Development and Social Policy program at Northwestern University. She received her bachelor's degree from DePauw University in Spanish and a master's degree from Northwestern University in Education and Social Policy. She has worked in K-12 schools in several capacities, most recently as a teacher of high school Spanish. Her main research interests involve how messages about gender, race and ethnicity impact people's ambitions, achievements and life narratives.
		Hee-Sun Kim Hee Sun Kim is a doctoral student in pastoral care and counseling at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. She received her BA and MA in Christian studies from EWHA Women's University in Korea and her master's in theological studies with focus on pastoral counseling from Garrett. Her main interests are providing psychological and theological frames for Christian women who suffer domestic violence and helping them reinterpret the meaning of suffering, the cross, forgiveness, etc. She wants to integrate Dr. McAdams's narrative methods to bring healing and redemptive narratives by helping women narrate their own stories, ultimately so that women could reconstruct the past and reimagine a new future.
		Miriam Klevan Miriam Klevan is a second-year doctoral student in the Human Development and Social Policy program. She received her BA in English literature from Columbia University and her MSW from New York University. She has worked clinically with domestic violence victims, families at risk of being separated by the child welfare system and foster families, and has used narrative methods in her therapeutic practice. Her research interests include using narrative methods to study infertility, adoption and foster care. She is currently conducting narrative research into the way infertile adoptive parents interpret and contextualize their family building experiences.
		Ben Schalet Ben Schalet is a doctoral student in the clinical/personality psychology program at Northwestern University. He received his BA in Fundamentals: Issues and Texts from the University of Chicago in 1995. His general research interests center on the relationship between enduring traits and the development of psychopathology. He is currently investigating with Professor Emily Durbin how adaptive personality traits (such as openness to experience and intellect) may also contribute to depression and hypomanic vulnerability. His interests further include observational research methods, personality theory and psychotherapy outcome.
		Tiffany Simons Tiffany Simons is a doctoral student in the Learning Sciences program at Northwestern University. Her interests lie at the intersection between human development and environmental education. Her dissertation work focuses on the role of identity and personality in the development of long-term commitment to issues of ecological sustainability. She hopes to better understand the factors that lead people to engage with various communities and types of environmental/social action, and to consider the implications for the design of learning environments (formal and informal) to promote sustainable action over time.
		Katie Weitz White Katie Weitz White, who is on leave, is a fourth-year doctoral student in the Human Development and Social Policy program at Northwestern University. She received her bachelor’s degree from Carleton College in political science and a master’s degree from DePaul University in education, as well as a degree from Northwestern University from the School of Education and Social Policy. Before coming to Northwestern, White taught in Chicago-area schools for almost five years. Her work with Professor Dan McAdams has been to analyze stories of principal school leadership told by Chicago Public School principals in collaboration with Professor James Spillane through a Spencer Foundation fellowship. White is also a fellow in the Multidisciplinary Program of Education Sciences at Northwestern and is working on differences in expert and novice principal problem solving. Her current work centers on the roots of generativity: asking how urban adolescents engage in civic life and develop political identity.
		Joshua Wilt Joshua Wilt is a doctoral candidate in the clinical and personality psychology program at Northwestern University. He received a bachelor's degree, magna cum laude, from The Ohio State University in psychology with a biochemistry minor in 2005. He received a master's degree from Wake Forest University in psychology in 2007. He has collaborated with Professor Dan McAdams, using his narrative theory of personality and associated methodologies to study the properties of individual scenes in life stories and how individual scenes are linked together. His current research interests include personality theory, psychometrics and the ways people use their life stories in daily life.
Collaborators and Associates
		Jack J. Bauer, PhD Jack Bauer, PhD, is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Dayton and a former postdoctoral fellow at the Foley Center. His research explores how people use ideas of growth to shape their life stories and how these "growth stories" facilitate eudaimonic well-being. He studies these ideas in the context of growth motivation and transcending self-interest across adulthood. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Research in Personality. He is the co-editor of Transcending Self-Interest: Psychological Explorations of the Quiet Ego (2008, American Psychological Association Books). Before entering psychology he worked as a newspaper editor in northern Michigan.
		Philip J. Bowman, PhD Philip Bowman is director of the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy and professor of urban planning and policy and of African American studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago. A former faculty member at Northwestern University, Professor Bowman collaborates with Professor McAdams on research into the development and manifestations of generativity among African American adults. He is co-author with McAdams of "Narrating Life’s Turning Points: Redemption and Contamination," in Turns in the Road: Narrative Studies of Lives in Transition (edited by McAdams, Josselson and Lieblich; APA Press, 2001).
		Ed de St. Aubin, PhD An associate professor of psychology at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Professor de St. Aubin received his PhD in human development and social policy from Northwestern University. He and McAdams have collaborated on studies of generativity, and they are co-editors of Generativity and Adult Development: How and Why We Care for the Next Generation (APA Press, 1998) and The Generative Society (APA Press, 2003). Dr. de St. Aubin’s scholarship continues in the personological tradition that defines the Foley Center. His current efforts focus on adult personality development with an emphasis on personal ideology, ego development, sexuality and the narrative construction of self.
		Craig Joseph, PhD Craig Joseph is currently a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University and an associate of the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago, from which he also received his PhD (back when it was called the Committee on Human Development). Dr. Joseph's current research focuses on the cultural psychology of moral functioning, especially the role of virtues and character; and the psychosocial adaptation of Muslims and Muslim communities to life in the United States, with a particular focus on the role of full-time Islamic schooling in the development of Muslim-American identity. Among his recent publications are "Intuitive Ethics" (co-authored with Jonathan Haidt) and "Islamic Schools, Assimilation, and the Concept of Muslim-American Character" (with Barnaby Riedel). Joseph has taught at the University of Chicago, DePaul University, The University of Illinois at Chicago and the City Colleges of Chicago.
		Ruthellen Josselson, PhD Dr. Josselson is the author of Revising Herself: The Story of Women's Identity from College to Midlife, a longitudinal study of women's growth based on intensive interviews, and The Space Between Us: Exploring the Dimensions of Human Relationships, a phenomenological study of how people connect with one another over a lifetime. She is the co-editor of the annual The Narrative Study of Lives. Josselson's most recent book, with Terri Apter, Best Friends: The Pleasures and Perils of Girls' and Women's Friendships, sheds light on the unique characteristics of female interaction and its implications for relationships.
		Tae-Chang Kim, PhD Tae-Chang Kim is president of the Institute for Integrated Study of Future Generations in Kyoto, Japan.
		Amia Lieblich, PhD
		Jen Pals Lilgendahl, PhD My research examines processes of self-definition and identity construction in adolescence and adulthood, with a specific focus on how people connect memories of past events to the present self through the narration of a life story. I am primarily interested in narratives of very negative and identity-challenging life experiences. I identify individual differences in how adults interpret such experiences in relaton to self (e.g., growth, regret, defensive minimization) and relate those differences to personality, social/cultural contexts and important outcomes in adult life, including well-being, maturity and physical health.
		Michael W. Pratt, EdD A professor of psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Dr. Pratt received his EdD in human development from Harvard University. He is interested in moral development and generativity and their socialization and expression, particularly within the context of the family. He is co-editor with Barbara Fiese of a forthcoming book on family narratives, Family Stories and the Life Course: Across Time and Generations (Lawrence Erlbaum Press, 2004).
Research Assistants
		Kathrin Hanek For the 2009-10 academic year, Kathrin Hanek is working as a research assistant at the Foley Center. She received her BA, magna cum laude, with majors in psychology, English, and economics from Northwestern University in June 2009. Her honors thesis, which was awarded the 2009 William A. Hunt Award from the Northwestern psychology department, examined the psychological dynamics of Christian prayer in relation to political orientation and happiness. Kathrin is currently working on the Faith, Politics, and the Life Story project, among others.

Undergraduate Students (2009-2010)

School of Education and Social Policy 2120 Campus Drive Evanston, IL 60208
Phone: 847-491-8193 E-mail: sesp@northwestern.edu
©2009 Northwestern University