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News
January 6, 2009
For immediate release
Erin Dowdy and Matthew Quirk of UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School chosen as early career scholars for the School Psychology Research Collaboration Conference
Assistant Professors Erin Dowdy and Matthew Quirk of UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School have been chosen as early career scholars for the School Psychology Research Collaboration Conference to be held August 4-5 in Toronto, Canada. The Society for the Study of School Psychology (SSSP) sponsors the School Psychology Research Collaboration Conference (SPRCC) biyearly to enhance the research efforts and skills of early career researchers who conduct psychological research relevant to education and the practice of psychology in the schools. Dowdy and Quirk are two of only 45 professors chosen for this honor.
The conference is designed to facilitate multi-site research by encouraging interactions between early career researchers, senior researchers, and assorted funding agencies. SSSP recognizes that research on important educational and practice issues require large samples from diverse contexts to support the validity and applicability of findings across diverse populations and contexts. Collaboration among conference attendees will result in researchers being able to address complex and important problems relevant to education and the practice of psychology in the schools.
Erin Dowdy is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology. She received a B.S. from Florida State University and a M.Ed. and Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from The University of Georgia. Following completion of coursework, Dowdy completed an internship at the University of Southern California/Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, receiving specialized training in pediatric and clinical psychology. After earning a California School Psychology Credential, she worked as a school psychologist in a broadly diverse school district south of Los Angeles. Dowdy has conducted research in the areas of behavioral assessment, specifically early identification of child behavior problems and classification methods. In addition to her program of research in the area of classification, screening, and early intervention, she has recently conducted research in the areas of pediatric psychology and culturally competent treatments for diverse populations.
Matthew Quirk is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology. After receiving a B.S. in elementary education from Penn State, he taught at both the pre-k and 2nd grade levels in Athens, GA. His subsequent experiences teaching in schools that served students from low SES backgrounds had a significant influence on his interest in children’s early literacy development and academic motivation. Quirk’s post-graduate work at the University of Georgia focused on the interplay between the development of students’ early reading skills and their motivation for engaging in reading related activities. After receiving a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in Educational Psychology, he spent two years as an Assistant Professor in the Graduate Reading program at California State University, Long Beach where he taught courses on reading assessment and instruction as well as courses on research methods and quantitative statistics.
[Erin Dowdy and Matthew Quirk are available for interviews; contact George Yatchisin at 805 893 5789]
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