Steffany J. Fredman, Ph.D., Lab Director
Dr. Steffany Fredman is an Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State. She studies the intersection between individual well-being and couple/family functioning. Dr. Fredman's research focuses on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental health conditions within a couple context and sits at the junction of (1) family science, (2) clinical psychology and (3) quantitative methods that link individual and couple functioning across multiple time scales. Broadly speaking, her work seeks to enhance understanding of ways that PTSD affects intimate relationships, how aspects of the trauma survivor’s close relationships can impede or facilitate recovery from PTSD, and how involving intimate others can improve individual and relationship outcomes for those with PTSD and their loved ones.
Learn more about Steffany's work: https://hhd.psu.edu/contact/steffany-fredman |
Jeesun Lee, Graduate Student
Jeesun Lee is a graduate student in the CFAS lab. She received her M.A. in Clinical and Counseling Psychology from Seoul National University, Korea and worked as a clinical psychologist prior to joining our lab. Jeesun’s research focuses on (1) identifying the key elements of a couple's dynamic that affect their psychological well-being and romantic relationships, particularly among couples coping with contextual stress and (2) exploring how couple functioning affects child and adolescent mental health. She hopes to answer research questions by encompassing the realms of mental health, family science, and advanced methodology. Guided by her value, Jeesun’s ultimate goal is to enhance healthier couple relationships, thereby contributing to their individual psychological and physical well-being, as well as the overall family relationships.
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Lab Alumni |
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Yunying (Annie) Le, Ph.D. Research Assistant Professor
Dr. Annie Le is a graduate of the CFAS lab currently working as a research assistant professor in the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Denver. Her research interests are situated at the junction of (1) family science, (2) prevention and intervention science, and (3) quantitative methodology. Her work seeks to enhance understanding of relationship processes within couples as they adapt to stress across a variety of normative transitions (e.g., transition to parenthood) and non-normative experiences (e.g., traumatic events) across the life span. The ultimate goal of her work is to improve existing intervention/prevention programs that promote couple and family health. Two overarching questions that guide her program of research: (1) What are the adaptive and maladaptive ways that couples interact under stress across different time scales (e.g., seconds, days, months, years)? (2) How do couple-based intervention programs mitigate risk and foster resilience across the entire family system?
Learn more about Annie's work: http://yunyingleannie.weebly.com |
August Jenkins, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Researcher
Dr. August Jenkins is a recent graduate of the CFAS lab currently working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She received her B.A. in Psychology from Michigan State University and joined the Human Development and Family Studies program at Penn State in 2016. August is interested in studying racial and ethnic minority couples and families that are frequently underrepresented in the research literature and often decontextualized from their racial, social, and spatial environment. More specifically, she studies how race-related stressors (e.g., discrimination, microaggressions) and sociocultural resources (e.g., racial identity, religiosity) intersect with individual mental health and couple functioning among African American couples. Additionally, August is interested in contextualizing these intersections within the broader environment in which they are embedded by capturing the effect of neighborhood-level characteristics. In spring 2020, she received an NRSA F31 Pre-doctoral Diversity Fellowship to support her dissertation reseach on the associations between relationship functioning and psychological well-being among African Americans. The ultimate goal of August's research is to improve well-being and relationship functioning among Black Americans specifically, and ethnic minorities more broadly, by utilizing the sociocultural strengths they already possess and elucidating and addressing the harmful effects of negative racial experiences they may encounter.
Learn more about August's work: https://augustjenkins.weebly.com/ |