Leadership
Director, Center for Family Resilience
Department: Human Development & Family Science
Office: OSU Tulsa, Main Hall 1101
Phone: 918-594-8506
Email: brooke.tuttle@okstate.edu
Areas of Expertise: Law enforcement officer stress and wellness, program evaluation
Population of Interest: First responders and law enforcement families; at-risk youth;
families impacted by the justice system.
Brooke McQuerrey Tuttle serves as the Director of the Center for Family Resilience, where she leads community-based research and translational science initiatives around topics of youth development, offender reintegration, health disparities, and children’s behavioral health. She received her M.S. in Criminal Justice from the University of Central Missouri and holds a Ph.D. in Human Sciences from OSU. Dr. Tuttle’s research focuses on risk and resilience for police officers and law enforcement families. She also partners with the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services on prevention efforts to promote self-regulation and prosocial behaviors among Oklahoma students and reduce their risk for negative mental health outcomes. Prior to joining the OSU Center for Family Resilience in 2016 to coordinate and manage research projects, Dr. Tuttle gained experience in government and non-profit sectors through direct and indirect support of individuals and families impacted by justice system involvement.
Associate Directors
Professor, Bryan Close Chair in Early Childhood Development
Department: Human Development & Family Science
Office: 244 Nancy Randolph Davis
Phone: 405-763-6811
Email: amanda.harrist@okstate.edu
Areas of Expertise: Parent-child and peer relations in development of child social competence; Psychosocial
contexts of child obesity; theories of family resilience
Population of Interest: Rural school children; Pre-school and school-age children, their parents and siblings;
Native-American school children.
Amanda Harrist received her B.A. in Plan II/Liberal Arts Honors at the University of Texas in 1984. She completed her Ph.D. at University of Tennessee in 1991, working as a Research Associate for the Child Development Project at UT Knoxville and Vanderbilt University. She joined the OSU faculty in 1998. Dr. Harrist’s research centers on an interest in the development of children’s social competence, specifically the early social antecedents of children’s competence and maladjustment exhibited in preschool and the early years of school, and the role social-cognition plays as a mediator. To this end, she has explored the relation of children’s behavior in the peer group to early family (e.g., marriage, parent-child, sibling) interactions, observed both naturalistically and in the laboratory. She is interested in interventions for children at risk in early social settings, and has pursued this via several funded projects, most recently in the USDA-funded Families & Schools for Health (FiSH) Project, a longitudinal study of the family and rural school contexts of child obesity. She also is working with OSU colleagues Dr. Carolyn Henry and Amanda Morris to refine a theory of family resilience.
Clinical Associate Professor
Department: Human Development & Family Science
Office: 233 Nancy Randolph Davis
Phone: 405-744-8358
Email: gwelch@okstate.edu
Areas of expertise: Infant mental health; pediatric psychology; trauma; maternal mood disorders; work/parenting balance
Populations of interest: infants and children under 5; individuals with chronic/serious health conditions; foster care; educators; rural communities
Ginger Welch serves as the Associate Director for Community Engagement and Outreach for the Center for Family Resilience. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Early Childhood Education, a master’s degree in Family Relations and Child Development, and a doctoral degree in Counseling Psychology. She also completed a two-year fellowship in Child Clinical and Pediatric Psychology through the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. She is currently a member of the Maternal Mood Disorders work group for the State of Oklahoma, a hub faculty member for the OSU Pediatric Obesity ECHO project, and a member of the State of Oklahoma Obesity Task Force. She serves on the boards of the Early Childhood Coalition, the Oklahoma Council on Family Relations, and the Oklahoma Family Resource Coalition. She has been with the OSU Department of Human Development and Family Sciences since 2012 where she is the undergraduate internship coordinator.