Professor Michelle Dunlap's publications list

Professor Dunlap shares her views on "Why I Teach" in the Winter 2004 issue of CC: Magazine.

"Dealing comfortably and competently in cross-cultural communications and interactions is a minimal requirement of our work with children, families, and other human beings. Institutions of higher education more than ever are realizing the need for all students to be well-grounded academically, and practically, especially when it comes to understanding and dealing with people. Students need to be able to apply their academic learning to everyday functioning in the real and ever-changing world. Service learning is one way that institutions of higher education are attempting to bring the curriculum more to life and assist their students in making connections between the classroom and real life in a multicultural world." - Michelle Robin Dunlap

Michelle R. Dunlap
Professor of Human Development
On sabbatical academic year 2009-2010

• Improving college student coping and skills in community service learning settings
• Social and personality development
• Contemporary family issues (e.g. single parent families, kinship care families)
• Multicultural issues and methods for increasing service provider cultural competency

Professor Dunlap graduated from Wayne State University with high distinction and with honors in psychology. She was awarded a McKnight Doctoral Fellowship from the Florida Education Fund.

She earned her master of science and her doctor of philosophy degrees in social psychology from the University of Florida in 1993. While attending graduate school, she taught college and worked as a counselor for Head Start children and their families at a community mental health facility.

She has served on the faculty of the human development department at Connecticut College since 1994, and also served as chair of the department and as Faculty Liaison to the Connecticut College Children's Program in 2000-2001 and 2006-2009.

She teaches Introduction to Human Development: Social World of Children & Families; Social and Personality Development; Adolescent Development; and Children and Families in a Multicultural Society.

Professor Dunlap has served in positions with the New England Psychological Association (NEPA), the Association for Women in Psychology (AWP), the American Association of Higher Education (AAHE), Campus Compact, Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI), and United Community Family Services (UCFS).

She reviews for journals such as Teaching of Psychology, Psychology of Women Quarterly (PWQ), and the Michigan Journal of Community Service. She was book review editor of Sex Roles: A Journal of Research from 2002-2005.

She has written journal articles, book chapters, and essays about her research involving college students working in community service-learning settings; intergroup relations; and perceptions and misperceptions of African American child rearing.

View Professor Dunlap's publications list.

Her work has taken her throughout the United States, and to Finland and Russia.

Her books include:

• Reaching Out to Children and Families: Students Model Effective Community Service (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, November, 2000)
• Charting a New Course for Feminist Psychology, (Westport, CT: Greenwood/Praeger Press, March 2002) with colleagues Lynn Collins and Joan Chrisler
• Community Involvement: Theoretical Approaches and Educational Initiatives (Blackwell Publishing, Incorporated (September 1, 2002)
• S. Evans, C. Taylor, M. Dunlap, & D. Miller, African Americans and Community Engagement in Higher Education: Perspectives of Race in Community Service, Service-Learning, and Community Based Research. NY: SUNY Press. (2009)

She is currently interviewing individuals for a book she is writing about minority shopping experiences in the marketplace. A call-for-interviews and information in PDF format may be accessed here.

Professor Dunlap was selected the State of Connecticut African American Affairs Commission (AAAC) 2005 Woman of the Year. View the CC news release and the State of Connecticut announcement.

Professor Dunlap received the 2008 New England Resource Center for Higher Education's Ernest J. Lynton Award for the Scholarship of Engagement. View the College's news release and the NERCHE Organization announcement.

View the human development department Web site.