Ph.D. Alumni

CJ Eubanks Fleming, Ph.D. ’14
Assistant Professor of Psychology, Elon University, North Carolina

Dr. Fleming is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Elon University, where she teaches Introduction to Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, Mental Illness in Film, and Introduction to Clinical Psychology.  Her current research areas include couples and relationship issues, treatment engagement and help-seeking behavior for mental health concerns, and understanding risks for and effects of specific psychological conditions such as posttraumatic stress disorder and substance use disorder.  She and her students have recently completed several projects focused on topics such as help-seeking after sexual assault on campus and help-seeking for anxiety both in-person and through the use of mobile applications.

Melinda Ippolito Morrill, Ph.D. ’14
Research Fellow, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Morrill is a Research Fellow on a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award T32 award from the Stuart T. Hauser Clinical Research Training Program in Biological and Social/Developmental Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She currently works in the Laboratory of Adult Development where she focuses on the role of childhood adversity in later life aging as part of a large National Institute of Health grant. Morrill’s research interests include investigating preventative family interventions to interrupt the intergenerational transmission of trauma, resulting in improved biopsychosocial functioning for future generations. She has authored and co-authored numerous peer-reviewed papers, book chapters and abstracts, and has been on the editorial board and served as an ad hoc reviewer for multiple family-focused academic journals. Morrill is also a member of the Perinatal Mental Health Working Group at the Commonwealth Research Center of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She lives in Boston with her husband and two children.

Jordan Downing, Ph.D. ’13
Assistant Director, Counseling and Wellness Center, Massachusetts College of Art and Design

Dr. Downing is the Assistant Director of the Counseling and Wellness Center at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She is broadly interested in how gender, sexual orientation, race, and other socio-cultural factors shape individual and family development. She is particularly interested in understanding how experiences of marginalization and discrimination impact identity formation and mental health.

Aaron Krasnow Ph.D. ’03
Associate Vice President and Director of Health and Counseling services, Arizona State University (ASU)

Dr. Krasnow is Associate Vice President and Director of Arizona State University’s (ASU) Health and Counseling services. In this role he provides administrative leadership for the 6 Health Service clinics and 4 Counseling Service clinics across ASU’s 4 campus locations. Dr. Krasnow began his tenure at Arizona State University in 2003 as a staff psychologist at ASU Counseling. In total, the clinics at ASU serve over 24,000 students per year with over 65,000 visits in primary care, urgent care, neurology, women’s health, rheumatology, occupational health, sports medicine for Division I athletes and club sports, pandemic disease prevention, acupuncture, chiropractic, massage, individual and group psychotherapy, psychoeducational workshops, suicide prevention, and behavioral risk management.

He has served in a number of capacities in various departments at ASU, including clinical director, Dean of Students (Polytechnic Campus), and now as Associate Vice President. He is also ASU’s HIPAA privacy officer, an Arizona-licensed Clinical Psychologist, and has been an instructor in ASU’s Fulton Colleges of Engineering and Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. He has consulted and presented nationally on topics such as student service best practice, clinic management, suicide prevention, quality improvement, and innovation. He is also the former Chair of the American Psychological Association, Division 17 Section on College and University Counseling Centers. He credits the variance in his career to a passion for supporting educational opportunity and providing solutions to real-world questions that affect our communities. His states that his passion for education, the skills and abilities to make positive change, and the willingness to challenge the status quo were nurtured primarily during his years as a graduate student at Clark.

Achu Alexander, Ph.D. ’20
Assistant Professor of Psychology, Anna Maria College, Paxton, Massachusetts

Achu completed her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology in June 2020 under the guidance of Dr. Jeffrey Jensen Arnett. She completed her B.Sc. Psychology from Women’s Christian College and M.A. Applied Psychology from University of Delhi, India. Her research interests are two-fold: (a) identity development of emerging adults, and (b) emerging adult student learning. Her mixed-methods dissertation adopted a cultural lens by focusing on the career engagement of graduating college seniors in preparation for their post-college lives in two contexts, India and the United States. During her doctoral studies, she taught at various institutions within the Colleges of Worcester Consortium such as Clark University, Quinsigamond Community College, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Anna Maria College, Paxton, Massachusetts.

Ayfer Dost Gözkan, Ph.D. ’12
Assistant Professor of Psychology, Ozyegin University, Istanbul, Turkey

Dr. Gözkan is a native of Turkey; she works at Ozyegin University Department of Psychology since 2012. She teaches classes such as Developmental Psychology, Motivation and Self-Regulation, Adolescence and Transition to Adulthood, and Child and Family Policies. She is the Psychology Department chair as of September 2017. Her research focuses on social and emotional development in adolescence, and positive youth development during adolescence and emerging adulthood. Currently she has been working on a project titled “Adolescent disclosure to parents: Individual and familial predictors and positive development” which is funded by The Scientific and Research Council of Turkey. She is part of a research team working on a cross-cultural positive youth development. Holding a BA and MA degrees in Philosophy, she is also interested in the theory and philosophy of psychology. She co-edited a volume titled “Norms, Groups, Conflict, and Social Change: Rediscovering Muzafer Sherif’s Psychology” with another Clark alumni, Dr. Doga Sonmez Keith. A second book she co-edited is titled PLAY from Developmental Psychology and Therapy Perspective (Gelişim Psikolojisi ve Terapi Perspektifinden Oyun) and has recently been released in Turkish from Ozyegin University Publications.

Juan Zhong, Ph.D. ’14
Adjunct Professor

Dr. Zhong is an Adjunct Professor, teaching statistics and research methods. She recently submitted a manuscript “Why go out?” The Leaving Home Decisions of Chinese Migrant Women Workers”.

Jessica McKenzie, Ph.D. ’14
Assistant Professor, California State University, Fresno

Dr. McKenzie is Assistant Professor of Child and Family Science at California State University, Fresno, where she teaches courses on youth development and family relationships in multicultural settings. Her research investigates how culture structures the life course, and how youth and families psychologically negotiate cultural change. Dr. McKenzie engages in longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork in northern Thailand, where she examines the practices and perspectives of parent-child dyads across contexts of globalization. Students in her Human Development and Culture Research Lab are currently investigating the moral frameworks that guide adolescents in variously globalized Thai communities, as well as how media use reshapes cultural socialization processes in urban Thai settings. More information on her research and publications can be found here.

Kathryn Frazier, Ph.D. ’15
Assistant Professor of Psychology, Worcester State University

Kathryn is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Worcester State University in Worcester, Massachusetts where she teaches classes such as Introduction to Psychology, Developmental Psychology and Psychology of Adolescence. She has previously served as a Lecturer of Psychology at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts and was the 2015-2016 Visiting Scholar in the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at Northeastern. Kathryn’s research is centered on women’s experiences of violence and vulnerability, and also on contemporary feminisms and women’s experiences of empowerment. She has published her work in a number of outlets including a book chapter in the Annals of Cultural Psychology and empirical articles in Feminism & Psychology, and Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science.

Gabriel Twose Ph.D. ’12
Senior Legislative and Federal Affairs Officer, American Psychological Association

Gabriel Twose is a Senior Legislative and Federal Affairs Officer at the American Psychological Association’s Public Interest Government Relations Office, where his portfolio includes human rights and socioeconomic status. He works with Members of Congress and their staff to provide psychology’s input into research priorities and federal policies, and coordinates support for legislation and issue positions. He is responsible for legislative analysis and reports, and relevant APA position papers, policy statements, and briefing sheets. He has previously worked with the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI), the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the International Center for Transitional Justice. Recent publications include a special issue on human rights of Peace and Conflict: the Journal of Peace Psychology, the International Handbook of Peace and Reconciliation, and The Trouble with Truth-telling: Preliminary Reflections on Truth and Justice in Post-war Liberia.

Nikita A. Kharlamov, Ph.D. ’13
Associate Professor of Psychology, Aalborg University, Denmark

Nik Kharlamov is fascinated by vision, particularly by the various perceptual and behavioral consequences of center-periphery organization of the human visual field. He is also interested in computational models of perception, their applicability, mutual compatibility, and limitations. His current research uses eye tracking and behavioral measures to evaluate how models of visual search relate to models of scene vision, particularly in naturalistic sensorimotoric tasks such as assembling toys. He is also interested in individual differences in visual perception (such as personality traits and attitudes).

Nik is extensively involved in teaching and supervising student projects in engineering psychology, and in work and organizational psychology. He also teaches cognitive psychology and research design.

Nik’s professional website is: people.hum.aau.dk/~nikita.

Katherine Lacasse, Ph.D. ’13
Assistant Professor of Psychology, Rhode Island College

Dr. Lacasse is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Rhode Island College where she teaches courses such as Social Psychology, Research Methods, and Introduction to Psychology. She is also developing an Internship Program for majors in the Psychology Department. Her current research investigates how performing green behaviors impacts people’s self-perceptions and political attitudes regarding environmental issues, as well as the role of emotional processes in risk perception. She has published several articles in journals such as Environment & Behavior and Emotion Review, and is active in interdisciplinary groups researching climate change and energy technologies.