Elissa Koff is the Margaret Hamm Professor of Psychology at Wellesley College. She teaches courses concerned with the relationship between brain and behavior (Biological Psychology, Drugs and Behavior), and conducts research in two areas: female development and the neuropsychology of emotion. Much of her research on female development has focused on early adolescent girls, and was conducted at the Wellesley Centers for Women, in collaboration with Dr. Jill Rierdan. The bulk of this work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development, as well as by grants from Wellesley College.
Dr. Koff is particularly interested in the development of body image; the effects of puberty and menarche (the onset of menstruation) on body image; the relationship of body image, pubertal status, and the development of eating disorders and depression; and other factors that might place girls at risk for developing negative body image and disordered eating- and weight-related attitudes and behaviors.
At the Wellesley Centers for Women, she studied body image and psychosocial functioning in a cross-cultural context, in collaboration with several Wellesley students. She also collaborated on a grant from the National Institute on Aging on the processing of emotion in patients with Alzheimer’s disease, and was a consultant to a project known as the “Bones Project” (Beat Osteoporosis: Nourish and Exercise Skeletons), which is seeking to develop interventions to maximize bone accretion and muscular strength in 1st and 2nd grade children. She collaborated with Dr. Nancy Genero, also of the Psychology Department at Wellesley, on psychological acculturation in 7th and 8th grade Hispanic and Brazilian girls in a Framingham middle school. Among the aims of this study was the documentation of the extent of acculturation stress in these girls, and the identification of factors that either protect against, or increase the risk of, acculturation stress.
Jean Hardisty was the founder and president emerita of Political Research Associates (PRA), a Boston-based research center that analyzes right wing, authoritarian, and anti-democratic trends and publishes educational materials for the general public. A political scientist with a B.A. and Ph.D. from Northwestern University, she left academia after eight years of teaching and researching conservative political thought to establish PRA in response to the emergence of the New Right in 1981. After 23 years, she retired from PRA in 2004 and served as a senior scholar with the Wellesley Centers for Women until her death in March 2015.
Dr. Hardisty was a widely published author and an activist for social justice issues, especially women's rights and civil rights, for nearly four decades. She served on the Board of Directors of the Highlander Center for Research and Education, the Ms. Foundation, the Center for Community Change. and the Center for Women Policy Studies. Her book, Mobilizing Resentment: Conservative Resurgence from the John Birch Society to the Promise Keepers, first published by Beacon Press in 1999, is available in paperback. Her most recent work, on race and child care in Mississippi, is on the WCW website.
Senior Scholar
Michelle Seligson arrived at WCW in the fall of 1978 to begin work on a national research and action project on afterschool programs, for which she received a small Ford Foundation grant. Originally titled The School-Age Child Care Project, it is now known as the National Institute on Out-of-School Time (NIOST). This work grew out of Seligson’s several years of community organizing and program development for the Town of Brookline where she was the assistant director of the Town's Human Relations/Youth Resources Commission. In that role she helped parents and others start afterschool programs in the public schools. When two mass-market magazines wrote about the Brookline programs, Seligson received thousands of letters from across the county, leading to her bringing the School-Age Child Care Project to WCW.
After more than 20 years as founding director of NIOST conducting research, technical assistance, training, and advocacy to stimulate more development of programs and policy in afterschool programs, Seligson began a new project at the Centers. This project, Bringing Yourself To Work: Caregiving in After School Programs, produced a book, Bringing Yourself to Work: A Guide to Successful Staff Development in After-School Programs (Columbia University, 2003), and a training program geared to adults who work with children. Its intellectual base is social-emotional learning and relational-cultural theory, among other theory frameworks.
Seligson has co-authored a number of publications through the years, beginning with School-Age Child Care: An Action Manual in 1982. During the mid-eighties, she embarked on an investigation of early childhood programs and the role of public schools, and this resulted in a book titled Early Childhood Programs and the Public Schools: Between Promise and Practice.
Seligson’s work at WCW reflects an interest and abiding belief in the power of good ideas to attract others to solve problems and a recognition that it takes at least 20 years to create a movement and a context in which that can happen.
In late September 2000, she embarked on a new venture in addition to her work on the Bringing Yourself to Work Project. She was accepted into the analytic training program at the Boston Jung Institute and participate in seminars and other activities associated with becoming a Jungian analyst. In 2003 she began collaborating on a documentary about mothers who are also women artists which is set for release in January 2008. Seligson retired from WCW in the summer of 2007.
Other interests have always been in the literary area—reading novels and writing poems, something she has done since adolescence. She is a swimmer, walker, and unabashed lover of her cat, Shadow. She is proud of her two adult children and their different life choices--one an attorney, and the other a musician and composer.
Non-WCW Publications:
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Noonan, A.E., Tracy, A.J., & Grossman, J. (2012). Constructing profiles of religious agreement and disagreement between adolescents and mothers: A research note. Review of Religious Research.
Alexander, P.C., Morris, E., Tracy, A., & Frye, A. (2010). Stages of change and group treatment of batterers: A randomized clinical trial. Violence and Victims, 25(5), 571-587.
Marshall, N.L. & Tracy, A.J. (2010). After the baby: Work-family conflict and working mothers’ psychological health. Family Relations, 58(4), 380-391.
Liang, B., Tracy, A.J., Kenny, M.E., Brogan, D., Gatha, R. (2010). The relational health indices for youth: An examination of reliability and validity aspects. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 42(2).
Tracy, A.J., Erkut, S., Porche, M.V., Kim, J., Charmaraman, L., Grossman, J.M., Ceder, I., & Vázquez Garcia, H. (2010). Measurement uncertainty in racial and ethnic identification among adolescents of mixed-ancestry: A latent variable approach. Structural Equation Modeling, 17(1), 11-133. NIHMSID 277208
Alexander, P.C, Tracy, A., Radek, M., & Koverola, C. (2009). Predicting stages of change in battered women. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 24(10), 1652-1672.
Yates, T.M., Tracy, A.J., & Luthar, S. (2008). Nonsuicidal self-injury among “privileged” youth: Longitudinal and cross-sectional approaches to developmental process. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 76(1), 52-62.
Schecter, E., Tracy, A.J., Page, K.V., & Luong, G. (2008). Shall we marry? Legal marriage as a commitment event in same-sex relationships during the post-legalization period. Journal of Homosexuality, 54(4), 400-422.
Liang, B., Tracy, A.J., Kenny, M., & Brogan, D. (2008). Gender differences in the relational health of youth participating in a social competency program. Journal of Community Psychology, 36(4), 499-514
Liang, B., Tracy, A.J., & Ting, D. (2007). The Relational Health Indices: Assessing men’s and women’s relationships. Australian Community Psychologist, 19, 35-52.
Wink, P., Ciciolla, L., Dillon, M., & Tracy, A. (2007). Religiousness, spiritual seeking and personality: Findings from a longitudinal study. Journal of Personality, 75(5), 1051-1070.
Liang, B., Tracy, A., Kauh, T., Taylor, C., & Williams, L. (2006). Mentoring Asian and Euro-American college women. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 34, 143-154.
Tolman, D.L., Impett, E.A., Tracy, A.J., & Michael, A. (2006). Looking good, sounding good: Femininity ideology and adolescent girls’ mental health, Psychology of Women Quarterly, 30, 85-95.
Perry, C., LeMay, N., Rodway, G., Tracy, A., & Galer, J. (2005). Validating a work group climate assessment tool for improving the performance of public health organizations. Human Resources for Health, 3(10). Available at http://www.human-resources-health.com/content/3/1/10. Published online 2005 October 13. doi: 0.1186/1478-4491-3-10. PMCID: PMC1276808
Cramer, P. & Tracy, A. (2004). The pathway from child personality to adult adjustment: The road is not straight. Journal of Research in Personality, 39, 369-394.
Taylor C.A., Liang B., Tracy A.J., Williams L.M., Seigle P. (2002) Gender differences in middle school adjustment, physical fighting, and social skills: Evaluation of a social competency program. Journal of Primary Prevention, 23(2), 259-272.
Tracy, A. J. & Erkut, S. (2002). Gender and race patterns in the pathways from sports participation to self-esteem. Sociological Perspectives, 45(4), 445-466.
Erkut, S., & Tracy, A. J. (2002). Predicting adolescent self-esteem from participation in school sports among Latino subgroups. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 24(4), 409-429.
Liang, B., Tracy, A., & Taylor, C. (2002). Mentoring college-aged women: A relational approach. American Journal of Community Psychology, 30(2), 271-288.
Liang, B., Tracy, A., Taylor, C., Williams, L., Jordan, J., & Miller, J. B. (2001). The Relational Health Indices: A study of women’s relationships. Psychology of Women’s Quarterly, 26, 25-35.
Tracy, A.J. (2000). Agreement among stepfamily members: A critique of the available modeling approaches. Journal of Divorce and Remarriage, 34(1), 95-110.
Collins, L.M., & Tracy, A.J. (1997). Estimation in complex latent transition models with extreme data sparseness. Kwantitatieve Methoden, 55, 57-71.
Edited Chapters
Tracy, A.J. & Erkut, S. (2007). “If you let me play…”: Does high school physical activity reduce urban young women’s sexual risks? In B.J. Leadbeater & N. Way (eds.), Urban girls revisited: Building strengths (pp. 263-280). New York: NYU Press.
Limber, S.P., Nation, M., Tracy, A.J., Melton, G.B., & Flerx, V. (2004). Implementation of the Olweus Bullying Prevention programme in the Southeastern United States. In Smith, P.K., Pepler, D., & Rigby, K. (eds.), Bullying in Schools: How Successful Can Interventions Be? Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Working Papers and Technical Reports
Ceder, I., Charmaraman, L., Erkut, S., Frye, A., Grossman, J., & Tracy, A. J. (2012) Can Sex Education Delay Early Sexual Debut? Journal of Early Adolesence. 1 - 16. doi: 10.1177/0272431612449386. Read article here.
Harris, T.C., Tracy, A.J., Fisher, G.G. (2011). 2011 Predictive Index® Technical Overview. PI Worldwide. http://www.piworldwide.com/Research-Insights/Whitepapers/2011/2011-Predictive-Index-Technical-Overview.aspx.
Tracy, A. & Erkut, S. (2010). Biracial/ethnic adolescents’ social adjustment profiles: Implications of identification categories and gender. Wellesley Centers for Women Working Paper Series, # 433. Wellesley, MA: Wellesley Centers for Women.
Pappano, L. & Tracy, A.J. (2009). Ticket office sexism: The gender gap in pricing for NCAA Division I basketball. (#432). Wellesley, MA: Wellesley Centers for Women.
McGroder, S.M. & Tracy, A.J. (2009). Profiles of Romantic and Sexual Relationships in Emerging Adulthood: A National Study. Washington DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation and the Family and Youth Services Bureau.
Robeson, W.W., Frye, A., & Tracy, A.J. (2009). Welfare reform, subsidized child care, and family and child well-being.
Erkut, S. & Tracy, A.J. (2005). Physical activity as a protective factor for sexual outcomes. Final report to the National Institutes of Health (NICHD).
Schecter, E., Tracy, A.J., Page, K.V., & Luong, G. (2005). "Doing marriage": Same-sex relationship dynamics in the post-legalization period. In Same-Sex Marriage Study Group (Ed.), What I Did for Love, or Benefits, or...: Same-Sex Marriage in Massachusetts (#424). Wellesley, MA: Wellesley Centers for Women.
Schecter, E., Tracy, A.J., Page, K.V., & Luong, G. (2005). Shall We Marry? Legal Marriage as a Commitment Event in Same-Sex Relationships During the Post-Legalization Period (#422). Wellesley, MA: Wellesley Centers for Women.
Tracy, A.J. & Sorsoli, C.L. (2004). A Quantitative Analysis Method for Feminist Researchers (#414). Wellesley, MA: Wellesley Centers for Women.
Porche, M.V., Fhagen-Smith, P., Kim, J.H., Vázquez Garcia, H.A., Tracy, A., & Erkut, S. (2004). Complexities in Researching Mixed Ancestry Adolescents: A Preliminary Study (#418). Wellesley, MA: Wellesley Centers for Women.
Erkut, S. & Tracy, A.J. (2003). Mixed Ancestry Adolescents (#409). Wellesley: MA: Wellesley Centers for Women.
Sayer, A.G. & Tracy, A.J. (1998). Using Developmental Processes to Predict Substance Use Outcomes (#98-25). The Methodology Center, Pennsylvania State University: State College, PA.
Tracy, A.J., Collins, L.M., & Graham, J.W. (1997). Exposure to Adult Substance Use as a Risk Factor in Adolescent Substance Use Onset: Part I (#97-13). The Methodology Center, Pennsylvania State University: State College, PA.
Tracy, A.J. & Sayer, A.G. (1997).Modeling Trajectories of Ego Resiliency Using Hierarchical Linear Models (#97-12). The Methodology Center, Pennsylvania State University: State College, PA.
Papers Presented at Professional Meetings
Marshall, N.L., Robeson, W.W., Tracy, A.J. & Roberts, J. (2009). Welfare reform, subsidized child care, and family and child well-being. Paper presented at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, San Francisco, CA.
Tracy, A.J., Erkut, S., Porche, M.V., Kim, J., Charmaraman, L., Grossman, J.M., Ceder, I., & Vázquez Garcia, H. (2008). Measurement uncertainty in racial and ethnic identification among adolescents of mixed-ancestry: A latent variable approach. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Research on Adolescence.
Ceder, I., Charmaraman, L., Erkut, S., Grossman, J.M., Kim, J., Porche, M.V., Tracy, A.J., Vázquez Garcia, H. (2008). An exploratory study of mixed-ancestry adolescents’ social adjustment strengths and challenges: A contextual approach. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association.
Tracy, A.J. & Erkut, S. (2007). Modeling ambiguity in racial and ethnic identification among mixed ancestry adolescents: Two latent variable approaches. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association.
Hopper, J.W., Tracy, A.J., & Lukas, S.E. (2007). Development of a model-based self-report measure of marijuana's subjective effects: A preliminary web-based study. Poster presented at the meeting of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence.
Marshall, N.L. & Tracy, A.J. (2006). Work Organization and Employed Women’s Post-Partum Health. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Sociological Association, Montreal, CA.
Schecter, E., Tracy, A.J., Page, K., & Luong, G. (2005). "Doing marriage": Same-sex relationship dynamics in the post-legalization period. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Association.
Tracy, A.J. & Erkut, S. (2004). Review of the Recent Empirical Literature on Mixed-Ancestry Youth. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association.
Tracy, A.J. & Sorsoli, C.L. (2004). Latent variable mixture modeling as a new tool for feminist researchers: A conceptual overview. Presented at the meeting of the International Sociological Association, Amsterdam.
Tracy, A.J. & Erkut, S. (2004). On the right track: Can girls’ physical activity in high school predict safer sexual outcomes in young adulthood? Paper presented at the Brown Bag Lecture Series, Murray Research Center, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.
Tracy, A.J. & Erkut, S. (2003). The role of cultural context in the effect of physical activity on girls’ sexual risk taking over time. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development.
Tracy, A.J. & Erkut, S. (2003). Physical activity and girls’ sexual outcomes: The role of race/ethnicity and geography. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for Research on Adolescence.
Tracy, A.J. & Erkut, S. (2002). Physical activity and girls’ sexual outcomes: The role of race/ethnicity and geography. Paper presented at the Add Health Users Workshop.
Tracy, A.J. & Erkut, S. (2002). Race and gender patterns in the paths from sports to self-esteem. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for Research on Adolescence.
Erkut, S. & Tracy, A.J. (2001). The link between high school sports and girls’ sexual behavior: The role of race/ethnicity and residential context. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development.
Tracy, A.J. & Erkut, S. (2001). Sports participation and self-esteem: Exploring process within gender and racial/ethnic groups. Paper presented at the Add Health Users Workshop.
Tracy, A.J. (2000). Girls’ sports participation and lower risky sexual behavior: Exploring the hows and whys. Paper presented at the Add Health Users Workshop.
Erkut, S. & Tracy, A.J. (1999). Protective effects of sports participation on girls’ sexual behavior. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Association.
Statistical analyst for the following papers:
Perry, C., LeMay, N., Rodway, G., Tracy, A., & Galer, J. (2005). Validating a work group climate assessment tool for improving the performance of public health organizations. Human Resources for Health, 3. Available at http://www.human-resources-health.com/content/3/1/10.
Cramer, P. & Tracy, A. (2004). The pathway from child personality to adult adjustment: The road is not straight. Journal of Research in Personality, 39, 369-394.
Limber, S.P., Nation, M., Tracy, A.J., Melton, G.B., & Flerx, V. (2004). Implementation of the Olweus Bullying Prevention programme in the Southeastern United States. In Smith, P.K., Pepler, D., & Rigby, K. (eds.), Bullying in Schools: How Successful Can Interventions Be? Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
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