I have been a student in the Quantitative program since 2006. I came into KU with an M.S. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and a B.A. in Psychology from Wheeling Jesuit University. I am currently the GTA for PSYC 790/791: Statistical Methods in Psychology. Outside of KU, I work as a Research Associate for Applied Measurement Professionals, Inc., a firm specializing in certification exam development and administration. My research interests include personnel selection, psychometrics, and performance appraisal. I live with my wife and son in Olathe, KS.

I am currently enrolled in both the quantitative and developmental psychology programs at KU. My primary research interests are self-regulation and the development of morality in young children. My quantitative interest is in structural equation modeling, though future work is aimed at examining nonlinear dynamical systems.

I am originally from the Ozark Mountain region of North Central Arkansas. Before attending KU I received a B.A. in psychology from Lyon College in 2004 and a M.S. in experimental psychology from Emporia State University in 2006. I am currently a second year quantitative student working under the direction of Todd D. Little, Ph.D. I am also a graduate research assistant for the Kansas Early Head Start Evaluation Project lead by Christopher L. Smith, Ph.D. My current research interests include program evaluation and missing data. In my spare time, I enjoy fishing, running, and biking.

My primary research interest is in decision-making and discrete-choice models, with extensions to sequential choice and group process models, using game theory and social choice frameworks. I am particularly interested in the application of these models to the analysis of public policy.

My research interests include assessing mediation and moderation effects in latent variable models, as well as modeling processes of change over time. I am interested in examining self-regulatory processes (i.e. the cognitive regulation of emotion), and the relationships between self-efficacy and the pursuit of personal/social goals.

I hold a 50% GRA appointment working at Advanced Statistical Methods (ASM) Core in the Center for Biobehavioral Neurosciences in Communication Disorders (BNCD).

My primary research interests are in applications of Item Response Theory (IRT) and Structural Equation Models (SEM) for solving psychometric and educational problems including equating, measurement invariance, and differential item functioning (DIF). Additional areas of interest include applications of categorical data analysis, hierarchical data analysis (i.e., mediation and moderation), IRT, and SEM to educational and organizational research. My recent projects involve the application and development of SEM models, which incorporate applied techniques to identifying individual and sociocontextual differences. Currently, I am conducting a simulation study that examines how well MIMIC models of different identification techniques work in terms of correct and incorrect DIF identification.

Currently I am in my 2^nd year of graduate school and finishing my Master's degree in the Quantitative Psychology program. I am originally from Little Rock, AR and completed my undergraduate degree here at the University of Kansas in Psychology with honors. I hold a 50% graduate research assistantship with Juniper Gardens Children's Project in Kansas City, where I am working with researchers there to further develop measurements of childhood communication. My recent Master's thesis concentrates on using longitudinal structural equation modeling to examine the predictive qualities of one of these communication measurements, the Early Childhood Indicator. I am also quite interested in the technical aspects of graphic design, and have practiced those skills in cooperation with other publications in the Quantitative program. When I'm not playing the role of statistician or graphic artist, I enjoy cooking, being outdoors, and going to music shows.

I have been a part of the quantitative psychology program since the Fall of 2003. I earned my master's degree in the Fall of 2005 and have been an instructor for undergraduate statistics since then. I thoroughly enjoy teaching and it has always been a passion of mine. My research interests involve teaching and learning issues, primarily at the college level. My dissertation project involves using structural equation modeling (SEM) to assist the University of Kansas in developing an alternative to the current teaching evaluation tool that is used in majority of classrooms. I plan on graduating in August of 2008.

My quantitative interests include structural equation modeling, multilevel modeling, bootstrapping, and longitudinal mediation models. My substantive interests focus on parenting and its impact on children's development. I am currently working on my dissertation that will use simulation to compare alternative approaches to bootstrapping. In addition, I am also working on projects that examine parenting behavior as a mediator of parental psychopathology and the measurement of parenting style in different ethnic groups.

I came to KU from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where I spent two years teaching math (Calculus I-III and a graduate course in mathematical statistics). My prior graduate work was in mathematics/statistics (MS, Missouri State; NSF Graduate Fellowship, Iowa State) and social psychology (MA, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).

I am interested in statistics generally, and especially in mathematical statistics, mixed model theory, and psychometrics (including item response theory and multiple classification models). At present I am teaching Statistical Methods in Psychology I-II.

My hobbies include reading (Winston Churchill, C. S. Lewis, and Paul Johnson are favorites) and playing an occasional jazz piano gig. I live in Kansas City, Missouri with my wife, three-year-old son, and baby daughter.