Description of Research Expertise

Areas of Expertise
At-risk youth
Child and youth development
Resiliency and social-emotional development
Race and urban education

Professional Experience
Dr. Spencer received a Ph.D. in Child and Developmental Psychology from the University of Chicago. Prior to joining Penn GSE as the Board of Overseers Professor in 1993, she was a full professor at Emory University (1977 to 1993). Her adolescent-focused research addresses resiliency, identity, and competence formation processes of African-American, Hispanic, Asian-American, and Euro-American youth. The current emphasis on multi-ethnic youth evolves from a longstanding interest in the development of African-American and particularly male children and youth who grow up in low-economic resource families and communities. Specifically, her research and programming applications explore youths’ emerging capacity for healthy outcomes and constructive coping methods while developing under generally unacknowledged and highly stressful conditions. She has published approximately 100 articles and chapters since 1973, completed three edited volumes, and received funding for more than three dozen research proposals from foundations and federal agencies. She has contractual relationships with several service delivery agencies that provide mental health services to highly vulnerable youth. Dr. Spencer serves on several editorial boards and national committees and is a trustee of the Foundation for Child Development. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including Fellow status of Divisions 1, 7, 15, and 45 of the American Psychological Association. Most recently, she was awarded the 2006 Fletcher Fellowship, which recognizes work that furthers the broad social goals of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954. In 2005 she received the Senior Career Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest.

Research Interests and Current Projects
Current work includes data analysis of findings from a randomized trial that explores the efficacy of monetary incentive-based programming for high-achieving (A/B grade average) and low-achieving (C/D grade average) students in Trenton and Philadelphia secondary schools; neighborhood assessments as linked to the psychological well-being of youth; training service providers to utilize more human development sensitive strategies; and an investigation of the psychosocial functioning of youth in residential juvenile care facilities and predictors of recidivism is currently underway. Information about this research is available at W.E.B. Du Bois Collective Research Institute, www.dubois.gse.upenn.edu and CHANGES, www.gse.upenn.edu/CHANGES.