Speech title:
Psychosocial Development of Boys of Color

Oscar A. Barbarin, Ph.D.is Chair and Professor of  African American Studies and Professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park. He earned Masters of Psychology and  a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Rutgers University and did a Post-Doc in Social Psychology at Stanford University.  He has held faculty appointments at the University of Michigan where he also directed the University Center for Child and Family and was Executive Director of the South African Initiative Office.  He has held Distinguished Professorships at the University of North Carolina and Tulane University.  He has been a principal investigator on several national studies of young children at risk of behavioral, emotional  and academic difficulties. 

His current work aims to  illuminate biopsychosocial  influences on children’s development especially externalizing problems in boys of color. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Contributions to Understanding International, Cultural and Contextual Diversity in Child Development from SRCD. He was appointed chair of the US National Committee for Psychology by the National Academies of Science,  elected to the executive board of the International Union of Psychological Sciences and  served on the Governing Council of the Society for Research in Child Development.   His current research activities center around the development of boys of color; evaluation of universal mental health screening in school settings; and early childhood interventions. 

His most recent projects focus on children’s mental health particularly the effects of trauma on the emergence of behavior problems;  black-white achievement gaps and  effectiveness of school based interventions utilizing principles of Restorative Justice.