Faculty

Karen Fingerman

Emotional qualities of relationships improve across adulthood; as they grow older, adults report better relationships with their children, spouses, extended family, and friends. Dr. Fingerman's research examines the emotional qualities of interpersonal ties from young adulthood to late old age and seeks to explain this marked improvement in relationship processes.  

Melissa Franks

Dr. Franks' research focuses on dyadic processes of married couples managing chronic illness in middle and late life. 

Shelley MacDermid

One of the primary contexts within which adult development occurs is the workplace.  Dr. MacDermid's research has examined connections between work conditions and adult expressions of generativity, or investments in caring for and maintaining the larger society.

Daniel Mroczek

Dr. Mroczek's work looks at how personality and well-being change over time, and how that change is related to physical health and mortality.  

Shawn Whiteman

Dr. Whiteman's research examines the family processes related to youth's family relationships and individual adjustment from adolescence into early adulthood. A particular interest is how the transition of older siblings out of the family's home relates to the relationships and functioning of later-born children who still reside in the home.

Websites

Human Development Extension

Adult Family Research

Center on Aging and the Life Course