REACH

Eleanor Brown, PhD

Eleanor Brown, PhD is a licensed clinical psychologist and Professor of Psychology at West Chester University, where she directs the Early Childhood Cognition and Emotions Lab (ECCEL). Dr. Brown is internationally recognized for her scholarship on poverty and child development as well as her research on the arts’ impact. For the past 15 years, Dr. Brown and the ECCEL Team have partnered with Settlement Music School and other community organizations serving children and families facing poverty and adversity to study how family and community strengths as well as psychology, the arts, and mindfulness might be leveraged to mitigate effects of stress and trauma. Dr. Brown’s research has been highlighted as a model by federal governmental agencies and private foundations, as well as organizations such as PBS Kids, and Sesame Workshop and PNC (Grow Up Great).

Dennie Palmer Wolf

Dr. Dennie Palmer Wolf is Principal Researcher at WolfBrown and one of the leading arts education researchers and evaluators in the United States. She holds a doctorate from Harvard where she served as a researcher at Project Zero for more than a decade where she led studies on the early development of artistic and symbolic capacities and later focused on design, implementation, and evaluation strategies that help arts organizations and communities examine and improve how people gain access to learning and creativity both in and outside of formal institutions. Nationally, Wolf has helped a number of city-wide and regional consortia build coordinated systems that support critical and creative learning for young people in and out of school time, in cities as varied as Boston, Chicago, Dallas, and Portland. Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for Arts, the U.S. Department of Education, the Buck, Arnold, Carnegie, Mellon, Spencer, and William Penn foundations, and has appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals and books.

Steven Holochwost

Dr. Steven J. Holochwost is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Lehman College at the City University of New York and Director of Research for Youth & Families at WolfBrown, where he works with programs designed to improve the lives of vulnerable children and youth. His research focuses on the effects of environment, and particularly poverty and parenting, on voluntary forms of self-regulation (e.g., executive functions) in childhood and the involuntary activity of neurophysiological systems that support self-regulatory abilities. This research is directly relevant to his applied work, which examines the efficacy of educational interventions for children in poverty. The common thread running through both these lines of work is the need to understand how poverty impacts child development, and how programs that expand educational opportunities for children can mitigate those effects.

Padmaja Charya

Padmaja Charya is a doctoral student at West Chester University where she works with the ECCEL and REACH labs. Through REACH, she is studying the neurophysiological and psychological impact of music and dance activities on preschool children who have experienced trauma and economic hardship. This area of research is particularly meaningful for her, as music and dance have had a powerful, healing impact on her own life.  

Prior to the PsyD program, Padmaja received her B.S. in Psychology from Drexel University and an M.S. in Clinical Health Psychology from Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. Since then, she has worked as a licensed mental health clinician for children and adults in Delaware and Pennsylvania. 

Cassie Gallo

Cassandra Gallo graduated from West Chester University (WCU) in 2022 with a BS in Psychology with minors in Contemplative Studies and Health Sciences. Cassie is currently working toward a MS in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at WCU. As an undergraduate, she spent two semesters in the ECCEL program. Post-graduation, Cassie became Lead Researcher at Settlement Music School, the Philadelphia Head Start location. Her responsibilities include scheduling, training students in administration of assessments, collecting cortisol samples, data entry, and video coding. She is also involved in Play on Philly data collection and data entry. Cassie is passionate about child psychology and plans to focus her career on working with children.  

Izabell Hearst

Izabell Hearst is a PsyD student at West Chester University. She received her BS in psychology from the University of the Sciences in May of 2022. Her previous research experience focused on using numerical card games to improve early numeracy skills for children from low-income and impoverished households. Her current research interests include examining the impact of teacher-student interactions on child stress and emotional regulation, and examining how visual arts relate to levels of the social bonding hormone oxytocin, potentially countering effects of stress. Izabell has a range of responsibilities with ECCEL and REACH, ranging from recruitment of research assistants to administration of child assessments and completion of biopsychology assays of stress hormones. A fun fact is that Izabell has three cats and a tortoise named Baba.

Amani Patel

Amani Patel is a Clinical Psychology PsyD student at West Chester University. She received her BS in psychology from Hofstra University in December 2023. Among other things, her past clinical research projects have investigated the the impacts of early intervention programs on children with disabilities. Current research interests include questions related to how parents' experiences of stress influence young children. Amani has served as a crisis intervention specialist, providing emotional support to adolescents and young adults who have experienced anxiety, depression, and trauma. Clinically, she is interested in examining how strengths of self-reliance influence coping skills for youth. 

Nasserra Robinson

Nasserra Robinson is a Clinical PsyD student at West Chester University. She is a veteran of the United States Navy and is a proud alumna of Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, where she received her BS in Psychology. Nasserra also received her Master's of Education in Counseling Psychology from Temple University. Nasserra's professional journey has included invaluable experience counseling individuals with a wide range of mental health needs at a partial hospitalization program. In this capacity, she applied evidence-based therapeutic methods such as DBT and CBT. She guided group therapy sessions focused on fostering healing and growth for every participant. Nasserra aspires to contribute to the field by conducting research, implementing interventions, and advocating for policies that foster trust, empower clients, and promote quality mental health care.

Emily Schnarr

Emily Schnarr is a Clinical Psychology PsyD student at West Chester University. She received her B.S. in Psychology and a minor in Spanish from Truman State University. She received her M.S. in Clinical Psychology from Missouri State University and had a research focus on trauma and resilience. She worked as a graduate assistant at the Learning Diagnostic Clinic to conduct psychoeducational evaluations. She worked in a private practice for a year, working with individuals with mood disorders, PTSD, and substance use. In the ECCEL and REACH Labs, Emily conducts assessments, collects cortisol samples, and assays cortisol samples for levels of stress hormones. Her research interests include resilience factors for those who have experienced trauma and the effects of trauma and stress on emotion regulation. Fun fact: she has two dogs whom she adopted from Missouri.

Fola Shokunbi

Fola Shokunbi is a Clinical Psychology PsyD student at West Chester University. He received a BA in Psychology from the University of Virginia in 2015 and an MT in Secondary Social Studies Education in 2016. His clinical interests are child and adolescent focused and include both treatment and assessment. Fola is particularly interested in issues concerning executive functioning and ADHD. Prior to enrolling at WCU he held several different research and clinical positions including working in an intensive group home for Boston area children with ages ranging from 7-13 as well as 4 summers at a short-term residential summer camp for children with trauma-based behavioral and emotional disorders. Additionally, he had the opportunity to work for the VCU site of the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development study, a planned 10-year study of substance use and brain development. Within ECCEL and REACH, Fola has administered child assessments as well as conducted biopsyhology assays of stress hormones. His research interests include examining how executive functioning develops across adolescence into young adulthood, factors leading to negative outcomes, and preventative measures that can be taken to avoid them. Fun fact: Fola ran track for 2 years while at UVA. Go Hoos!

Shanelle Stovall

Shanelle Stovall is a Clinical Psychology PsyD student at West Chester university. She received her BA in psychology from Rutgers University, May 2021, where she worked in a research lab that focused on language development. Shanelle's current research focuses on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children and families. A fun fact about is that she knows how to play violin, guitar, piano, drums, and harmonica at the beginner level. Also, she won the state championship when she was in 4th grade. She has two dogs; a Golden Retriever named Mackenzie and a St. Bernard named Leodis.

Caitlyn Thomas

Caitlyn Thomas is a Clinical Psychology PsyD student at West Chester University. She received her BA in psychology from the University of South Carolina in 2024, where she conducted research in the Research Center for Childhood Well-Being and the School Behavioral Health Lab. Within these roles, Caitlyn concentrated on advancing school-based mental health initiatives and parental interventions, and enhancing mental health literacy. She participated in an internship at Richland County Sheriff’s Department, where she guided youth, nurturing their decision-making skills, problem solving abilities, and goal-setting capabilities. Presently, Caitlyn is conducting research exploring music and self-regulation. Her broader research pursuits center on the development of childhood psychological difficulties, with specific interests in the impact of trauma and creation of early intervention programs in schools and communities.

Suzanne Varnell

Suzanne Varnell is a recent alum of the Psychology MS Program at West Chester University of Pennsylvania and a current doctoral student at Purdue. Her research interests include music and visual art and their effect on social-emotional learning and stress for children facing economic hardship. A fun fact is that she loves to dance and has taken classes in many styles including ballet, tap, and ballroom. She also graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture and a minor in Human Development and Family Studies from Pennsylvania State University in 2019. She realized through my thesis designing an arts center for youth facing economic hardship that she was more interested in the psychology component and wanted to contribute to the research she was finding on the impact of the arts.

Celia Wu-Hacohen

Celia Wu-Hacohen is an ECCEL research fellow at West Chester University. She received her BA in Psychology and minors in Music and Public Health from Brandeis University in 2023. As a pianist, Celia has always been fascinated by the intersection of music and the human body and, more specifically, the long-term effects of music on child development. She has worked with children and adults in various capacities, from promoting experiential learning environments for preschoolers, to helping pre-teens in a therapeutic residential treatment program build social, emotional, and behavioral skills, to utilizing music to rehabilitate memory loss patients. Seeing the benefits of music in all these experiences strengthened her commitment to making an impact on people’s lives through engaging them in the arts.