Description of Research Expertise

Areas of Expertise

Community-school-university partnerships
School mental health
School climate
Social-emotional development

Professional Biography

Dr. Watts has been at Penn GSE since 2008. She is a psychologist whose career has been devoted to developing healthy educational environments for children and youth. As a practicing child therapist, university educator, and program director, she aims to provide access for all children to the emotional and social developmental supports that will enable them to succeed in school, in their communities, and in their adult lives. She has focused her work on building capacity in mental health and educational systems to serve the complex needs of urban children, youth, and families through creating innovative institutional partnerships among schools, universities, and community health organizations. At Penn, she is a member of the Penn Partnership faculty group working as a leadership team for several West Philadelphia schools, where she is concentrating on improving school climate and building capacity to meet the social, emotional, and behavioral needs of students. Beginning this year, she is the GSE Coordinator of Special Education, working across divisions to develop coursework and experiential placements for students in TEP, RWL, and APHD, that will provide critical learning related to issues in special education and ELL.

Dr. Watts came to GSE from Boston, where she was the founding director of the Children’s Hospital Neighborhood Partnerships Program (CHNP), the community mental health outreach program of the Department of Psychiatry at Children’s Hospital Boston. The mission of CHNP is “to reach children where they live and learn,” which is operationalized in three strategic priorities: 1) to expand access to mental health services for unserved and underserved children and families; 2) to improve the quality and effectiveness of mental health services through training and professional development; and 3) to build the capacity of partner organizations to respond to the needs of their populations. From 1999 to 2006, Dr. Watts was also a lecturer on education in the Risk and Prevention Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she coordinated childhood practicum placements and taught a year-long course for students training in these sites.

Dr. Watts has over 20 years’ experience working in community and school settings to develop models for prevention and intervention services provided in a tripartite university-community agency-public school collaborative structure. She is a licensed practitioner of psychology in the states of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. She served as clinical director of the Devereux-Deerhaven Residential Treatment Center for Girls in Chester, New Jersey, part of the Devereux organization, the nation’s largest not-for-profit behavioral health care provider, based in the Philadelphia area. She is on the Education Board of Public Citizens for Children and Youth (PCCY), a Philadelphia-based child advocacy organization. Dr. Watts is also a member of two research teams at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, on foster care placement and school stability, and on teacher wellness.