Lorraine Gutierrez, Ph.D.

Professor Lorraine Gutiérrez has a joint appointment with the School of Social Work (SSW) and Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan and is a faculty associate in Latino Studies. She brings to her teaching community-based practice and research in multiethnic communities in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Detroit and Seattle. Her contributions to undergraduate education have been recognized by the Arthur F. Thurnau Professorship. She is the co-founder of the Detroit Initiative in Psychology.

Rona Carter, Ph.D.

About

My research has contributed to the body of knowledge on off-time pubertal development, that is, developing earlier or later than one’s same-sex peers. Off-time development is a non-normative aspect of puberty that confers risk for serious problems including depression, anxiety, and delinquency.

One area of my work explores parallel developmental tasks such as ethnic-racial identity development and psychologically threatening experiences (e.g., ethnic-racial and gender discrimination) that create resilience or vulnerability to puberty-linked outcomes like depression and delinquency.

The second area of my work investigates how interpersonal experiences with adults and peers such as exclusion by peers and contextual conditions such as the racial composition of schools help or hinder off-time pubertal effects. 

I draw upon both secondary data analysis and original data collection. My research is guided by the central tenets of social development theory which emphasize that individual development occurs within a social and cultural context, which itself develops, and furthermore, perpetually interacts with the developing individual.

Cathryn G. Fabian, MSW, PhD

Cathryn Fabian is a lecturer in the Department of Psychology and teaches the Detroit Initiative courses. She earned both her MSW (Community Organization/Community and Social Systems) and her Ph.D. (Social Work and Psychology) from the University of Michigan. She enjoys working with MCSP students as part of her personal commitment to promoting community-based learning as an integral component of higher education.  In addition to U of M, she has also taught in social work at Eastern Michigan University and Madonna University, and was also previously a research associate with the Center for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame. Her practice experience includes working with homeless and elderly populations in urban communities, and in community-based program development and evaluation, particularly around services to immigrants. Dr. Fabian also has expertise on the impact of community-based learning on student participants, particularly as it relates to personal, cognitive and career development.