Developmental Science
Department of Psychology • Florida International University

News & Announcements

Drs. William Kurtines and Wendy Silverman awarded $3 million to study cognitive behavioral therapy
Drs. Wendy Silverman and William Kurtines have been awarded $3,089,475 from the National Institutes for Mental Health (NIMH) for their grant Parent Mediation of Child Anxiety Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Outcome. They will conduct this work through The Child Anxiety and Phobia Program (CAPP) and the Youth Development Project (YDP). CAPP is a research program that operates under the auspices of the Child and Family Psychosocial Research Center and Department of Psychology, CAPP provides comprehensive diagnostic assessments and state-of-the-art treatments for children and adolescents. YDP has two main programs currently being implemented: the Longitudinal Lifecourse Change Project (LCP) and Changing Lives Program (CLP). CLP is a school-based counseling program that aims to empower troubled adolescents so they can be in control of their lives and take responsibility for changing their life course in positive directions. The LCP is an ongoing longitudinal study of quantitative and qualitative changes in the life course or life pathways of multi-problem adolescents in alternative school programs who do not receive psychosocial intervention.

Dr. Kurtines has won several grants that look at parent-child dyads and family processes. Professor Kurtines has been a visiting faculty member in the Department of Psychology at University of Texas at Austin, in the School of Education at Harvard University, a Visiting Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Education and Human Development in Berlin, Germany, and a Visiting Professor at Kobe Shinwa Women's University, Kobe, Japan.

Dr. Silverman has several grants in the past received grants to design and evaluate psychosocial interventions for children with anxiety disorders in the past. In addition, she has published over 100 research articles and book chapters on childhood anxiety, including children’s reactions following exposure to natural disasters and crime and violence, and has coauthored four other books. However, Dr. Silverman's students are among her greatest priorities as she strives to provide positive mentorship models. For her work in this area, Dr. Silverman has won a NIH Award to mentor minority graduate students and the FIU Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Mentorship.