Teaching

The heart of my career lies in teaching, which I consider my most gratifying responsibility. I have diverse teaching and research experience at two Big Ten universities (the University of Iowa and The Ohio State University), a small liberal art university (Manchester University), a historically black university (Tennessee State University), and an elite private research university (Vanderbilt University). After spending my summers in Nashville teaching in the psychology department at Vanderbilt since 2012, I joined the Vanderbilt faculty full time in 2019. 

Research

In 2019 I started teaching positive psychology at Vanderbilt. Having immersed myself and my students in the field, I found myself reading everything I could get my hands on related to the science of happiness. I have many questions about this research, including the underlying mechanism of the profound effects of nature on happiness and how well specific happiness habits generalize to differently abled people. After spending years thinking about this lacuna, I am spending 2025 transitioning the Maxcey Memory Lab to the Human Nature Lab.

Life

I am lucky to be the mother of the three best kids imaginable, one front porch cat, and one very cuddly dog. I’m in too many book clubs, am grounded by reading poetry, and enjoy teaching myself how to do home improvement projects. I love being invited to students events — if you invite me, I’ll be there!

My pronouns are she/her/hers.