University of Oregon scholars Katie McLaughlin and Lynn Stephen were elected in April to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, with 250 other leaders in academia, industry, the arts and more. McLaughlin, executive director of the Ballmer Institute for Children’s Behavioral Health, and Stephen, professor of anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences, join 15 other UO faculty who are members of the 200-year-old honorary society and research center that addresses challenges to advance the common good.
McLaughlin, Philip H. Knight Chair and professor of psychology, leads a groundbreaking institute that is responding to a national emergency in youth mental health. The Ballmer Institute is creating a new bachelor’s-level behavioral health profession that emphasizes prevention and brief intervention. This initiative aims to increase access to care and lead to improved mental health and well-being among young people nationwide.
A clinical psychologist, McLaughlin also investigates the role of environmental experiences in shaping children’s development and mental health. She examines how stress, trauma and social disadvantage in childhood alter development in ways that increase risk for mental health problems. McLaughlin translates her findings into early interventions to prevent the onset of behavioral health concerns in children who have experienced adversity. McLaughlin said she was “deeply honored to be elected to an institution devoted to advancing evidence and ideas that can positively impact society and civic life.”
Stephen is Philip H. Knight Chair and Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences. She focuses her research on immigration and asylum, gender-based violence, race, and Indigenous communities in Mexico, Guatemala and the diaspora in California and the Northwest. She emphasizes Indigenous epistemologies, or theories of knowledge, and public accessibility through films, websites and scholarly publications. She is the author of 15 academic books and over 100 articles and chapters.
She founded the UO Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies and served as director for nine years. Currently a fellow at the Stanford University Humanities Center, Stephen is also exploring the mobilization of Mesoamerican Indigenous languages and knowledges for health and socio-environmental justice, a project for which she received a $575,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation.
Her latest book, which will be published in September with coauthor Erin Beck, is “Seeking Justice for Gendered Violence: Courts, Communities, and Care in Guatemala.” Beck is an associate professor of political science at the UO.
“Critical thinking, writing, reading, expression, experimentation and conversation are essential,” Stephen said. “It is wonderful to be a part of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences community, which is dedicated to these practices now and into the future.”
“The nomination of faculty to the American Academy is further validation of what we at the UO already know: That our faculty, through their research, are giving back to society in areas where it means the most,” said Geri Richmond, interim vice president for research and innovation. “The mental health of our children matters. The lived experiences of Latinx and Indigenous communities navigating transnational relationships matter. I applaud Professors McLaughlin and Stephen for their achievements.”
—Matt Cooper, University Communications