Featured Member

Jamie L. Franco-Zamudio became a SPSSI member in 2001 as a first-year graduate student. She earned her doctorate in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) in 2009. She is currently Assistant Professor of Psychology at Spring Hill College (SHC), a Jesuit College in Mobile, Alabama. As a self-identified “Chicana/Native-American, first-generation college student, lesbian professor,” Franco-Zamudio has both a personal and academic interest in issues of diversity and social justice. She pays heed to her own experiences with privilege as well as marginalization when formulating research questions and developing course content.

A personal note: Finding my “fit”

As with many early career scholars, Dr. Franco-Zamudio has recently grappled with determining which career trajectory to pursue. She reflects, “I spent several years during graduate school working in community-based organizations as staff and on the Board of Directors. As a social justice researcher, I considered the possibility of providing direct services to communities in need. During the latter part of my graduate education, I was fortunate to secure employment as an adjunct instructor. It was then that I realized that I could combine my research, service, and teaching interests by teaching service-learning courses and conducting research that would be of use to grant writers and program managers in justice-based organizations. After learning more about the goals of Jesuit Education, it was evident that the emphasis on social justice and service to others was in line with my personal career goals.  Once I visited the SHC campus and saw the Jesuit mission in action, I knew that the community would be a great fit for me. This was especially important to me given that my dissertation topic focused on persistence and perceptions of fit.”

Honors

Jamie Franco-Zamudio was selected as the 2014 SPSSI Speaker at the National Institute for Teaching of Psychology. In 2013 she was selected as the Last Lecture speaker by Alpha Sigma Nu, the Jesuit Student Honor Society. In 2012 she was awarded the Edward J. Moody, S.J. Teacher of the Year Award at SHC. In 2011 Franco-Zamudio received the Rev. H.J. Fagot, S.J. Award for Service to the SHC student body and sponsored by the Student Government Association.

Research

Dr. Franco-Zamudio’s research focuses on two broad, yet interrelated areas: (1) social identity and perceptions of person-environment fit; and (2) collective action and the development of collaborations aimed at social change. In line with her goal of connecting research, service, and teaching, she and her undergraduate research assistants conduct basic and applied research that can be of use during teaching demonstrations and for the development programming and services. She currently serves as a consultant for a National Institutes of Health-funded project led by UCSC’s Dr. Martin Chemers and the Assessing Science Inquiry and Leadership Skills (AScILS) team. Their research, and the institutional research she conducts on campus at SHC, focuses on issues of identity and perceptions of person-environment fit. Most of this research is conducted with an express goal to uncover the factors affecting persistence to degree completion. The findings can be applied to college and university departments as well as conference and summer-research programs. Franco-Zamudio has also conducted needs assessments and program evaluations for non-profit organizations that serve women and children experiencing domestic violence and provide youth with education regarding the experiences of members of the GLBTQ community.

Teaching
At SHC, Dr. Franco-Zamudio teaches Psychology of Gender, Social Psychology of Social Justice, Personality Theories, General Psychology, Research Experience, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, and Social Psychology.In addition to traditional classroom and online teaching, she serves as an advisor for psychology majors and several student organizations and mentors student researchers. She has supervised approximately thirty undergraduate student researchers in her lab and fifteen Research Experience students pursuing individual research projects. Members of her lab and research class have presented at national and regional conferences and have received awards at the SHC Undergraduate Research Symposium that she co-coordinates each year. Last year, Franco-Zamudio worked with three Research Experience students, her Industrial-Organizational Psychology class, and the SHC Wellness Center to develop a peer-mentoring program at SHC (Peer One Project), which recently received an award for the Best New Student Organization. Her Social Psychology of Social Justice class created a campus-wide online magazine, PAX, devoted to Peace and Justice Issues. The class assignments included SPSSI teaching tools, so the first edition of PAX was full of letters to the editor, fact sheets, as well as service reflections.

Service to SPSSI
Dr. Franco-Zamudio served as Web/Newsletter Editor and Chair of the SPSSI Graduate Student Committee. During graduate school, she participated in a SPSSI sponsored policy briefing in DC that focused on the work she, Dr. Faye Crosby ,and Dr. Laura Sabatini published in Journal of Social Issues special edition devoted to theMaternal Wall. As an assistant professor, Dr. Franco-Zamudio has served as a reviewer for SPSSI symposium submissions and on the Crosby-Spendlove Travel Grant and Dalmas Taylor Memorial Summer Minority Policy Fellowship selection committees. She currently serves on the SPSSI Diversity Committee.

For more information about Jamie Franco-Zamudio, please visit her website at http://kudzu.shc.edu/jfrancozamudio/