2018 Outstanding Teaching and Mentoring Award Winner

Lauren Bennett Cattaneo, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychology at George Mason University, earned her doctorate in Clinical/Community Psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2001. She joined the faculty of George Mason University in 2003, where she has won awards for teaching excellence and community-engaged scholarship. Dr. Cattaneo applies a community psychology orientation to her work, centering on the ways psychology can help to address social problems. Dr. Cattaneo’s research has focused on the key constructs of empowerment, resilience, and survivor-centered practice. She collaborates with organizations who serve survivors of intimate partner violence in order to define, document and teach best practices, and she is a founding member of a multi-disciplinary effort in the District of Columbia which aims to create an evidence base to support the work of domestic violence service providers there. Dr. Cattaneo also focuses broadly on facilitating the empowerment and resilience of marginalized populations, and she intertwines her research, teaching, mentorship and service in that work. With a grant from the Spencer Foundation, Dr. Cattaneo has begun to explore the ways in which community-based learning can promote students’ understanding of and commitment to solving social issues. She is also a trained instructor in Inside-Out, a program that brings together college students and incarcerated students as classmates inside a correctional institution. In research and teaching, Dr. Cattaneo prioritizes partnership with community organizations to inform and share her work. She has published widely in outlets such as the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Psychology of Violence, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, American Journal of Community Psychology and the American Psychologist.