Carolyn Becker

Professor Carolyn Becker is a licensed clinical psychologist and faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Trinity University. She specializes in the implementation of scientifically supported interventions in clinical and real-world settings, with a focus on body image, eating disorders, and posttraumatic stress disorder.

Dr. Becker earned her B.A. from Swarthmore College, followed by her M.S. and Ph.D. from Rutgers University. Her educational background has provided a strong foundation for her research and clinical work in psychological interventions.

Carolyn Becker's research primarily focuses on body image issues, eating disorders, and PTSD, with particular attention to prevention programs and implementation in real-world settings. She has been a leader in the development and dissemination of the Body Project, a cognitive dissonance-based prevention program for eating disorders. Her work extends to understanding the relationship between food insecurity and eating disorder pathology, as well as examining body image concerns across the lifespan, including in older women and athletes. Dr. Becker has pioneered a blended task-shifting/train-the-trainers approach to scaling prevention programs, which has been implemented by over 250 universities in North America.

Her recent publications demonstrate a growing focus on the intersection of food insecurity and eating disorders, as well as expanding the application of evidence-based interventions to diverse populations including older women, athletes, and individuals from non-Western cultures. This reflects a trend toward greater attention to health disparities and the adaptation of interventions to meet the needs of specific populations.

Dr. Becker has received numerous awards for her teaching and mentorship, including:

• Z.T. Scott Faculty Fellowship for excellence in teaching and advising (2012)
• Piper Professor by the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation for superior teaching (2017)
• Lawrence H. Cohen Outstanding Mentor Award (2024)

Dr. Becker is known for her exceptional mentorship of undergraduate students, with 26 undergraduate research assistants earning co-authorship on publications over the past decade. Her research on eating disorder prevention with female athletes has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. She regularly involves Trinity psychology students as research collaborators and teaches courses related to clinical psychology, including Psychopathology, Clinical Psychology, Behavioral Medicine, and a First Year Experience course on Food Matters.

Dr. Becker collaborates with researchers across disciplines, including Dr. Keesha Middlemass from Howard University's Department of Political Science, to investigate psychopathology in individuals with food insecurity. Her work with the Body Project has created a global network of implementation sites, demonstrating the scalability and effectiveness of evidence-based prevention approaches.