Michelle R. Dunlap

Michelle Dunlap teaches Introduction to Human (Lifespan) Development; Adolescent Development; Children and Families in a Multicultural Society; Social and Personality Development; and Basic Applied Statistical Analyses. She has more than 40 publications, having written books, journal articles, chapters, and essays, about her research and experiences involving college students working in community service-learning settings; intergroup relations; and perceptions and misperceptions of African American child rearing; and most recently, Black and minority bodies shopping and other consumer marketplace experiences.

Michelle Dunlap Publications

Michelle Dunlap Digital Commons

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, 2006-2009, and 20015-2018.

She teaches Introduction to Human (Lifespan) Development; Adolescent Development; Children and Families in a Multicultural Society; Social and Personality Development; and Basic Applied Statistical Analyses.

Professor Dunlap has served in many board and other leadership positions over the years such as with the New England Psychological Association (NEPA), the national 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).  Most recently she serves on Brown University’s College & University Engagement Initiative’s (CUEI) Lynton Award National Advisory Committee. 

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 books, journal articles, chapters, essays, and poetry about her research and experiences involving college students working in community service-learning settings; intergroup relations; and perceptions and misperceptions of African American child rearing; and most recently, Black and minority bodies shopping and other consumer marketplace experiences.

She has traveled extensively and often presented her work nationally and internationally, with among her travels being Germany, France, Finland, Russia, Mexico, Canada, South America, and throughout the United States and Caribbean.  She has won local, state, and national awards for her community-engaged work such as the State of Connecticut African American Affairs Commission (AAAC) 2005 Woman of the Year, and the 2008 New England Resource Center for Higher Education's Ernest J. Lynton Award for the Scholarship of Engagement, and the 2018 National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) Eunice McLean Waller Award for Outstanding Work in Education and Community in 2018. She has been called on to consult for universities, schools, social service and community agencies, and businesses.

Her books include:

• Reaching Out to Children and Families: Students Model Effective Community Service, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (2000).
• Community Involvement: Theoretical Approaches and Educational Initiatives, with colleague Art Stukas, Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishing, Incorporated (2002).
• Charting a New Course for Feminist Psychology, with Lynn Collins and Joan Chrisler, Westport, CT: Greenwood/Praeger Press (2002).
• African Americans and Community Engagement in Higher Education: Perspectives of Race in Community Service, Service-Learning, and Community Based Research, with Stephanie Evans, Colette Taylor, & DeMond Miller, NY: SUNY Press (2009).
• Retail Racism: Shopping While Black and Brown in America, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (2021).

View the human development department website.

Majoring in Human Development.