UA’s Orman-Harris Lecture Sept. 27 to Focus on the Influences on Children’s Development

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The influences of parents, peers and teachers on a child’s development will be the focus of the 2007 Orman-Harris lecture, Thursday, Sept. 27 at 2 p.m. in the lecture hall of the Child Development Research Center on The University of Alabama campus.

Noted child development researchers Drs. Greg Pettit and Jacqueline Mize, professors of human development and family studies at Auburn University, will present “Interpersonal processes and children’s well-being: Mechanisms and contexts.”

The lecture, sponsored by the UA College of Human Environmental Sciences, is free and open to the general public.

Pettit is co-principal investigator of The Child Development Project, a multi-site, longitudinal research program funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Child Health and Development. This study examines social, emotional and scholastic development of children and adolescents as well as how various family, peer, school and neighborhood factors impact development.

Mize is co-principal investigator on the study, “Socialization in the family and child development: Emotionality, regulation, and sleep as pathways and moderators of outcomes,” and principal investigator of “Children’s motivational and adrenocortical responses to challenge: Mediators of child care effects on kindergarten adjustment.”

The Orman-Harris Lecture was established by the late Mildred Brown Davis to promote the professional development of The College of Human Environmental Sciences faculty and to enrich the quality of its academic programs. In the late 1940s, Davis received her graduate degree from the College and in 1981 was recognized as one of its outstanding graduates. Davis asked that the lectureship honor the memory of two distinguished educators and professionals, Elizabeth Carmichael Orman and Agnes Ellen Harris.

For more information, contact Dr. Mary Elizabeth Curtner-Smith, UA associate professor of human development and family studies, at 205/348-8151 or mcurtner@ches.ua.edu.