معرفی
Dr. Sara Dodd is Associate Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Texas Tech University’s College of Human Sciences and has served since 2011 as Director of the Center for Adolescent Resiliency (CAR). In these roles she leads trans-disciplinary research, outreach, and educational initiatives focused on adolescent development, health behavior, and community engagement.
Education: While specific degrees are not detailed in the provided text, her appointment as Associate Professor and extensive record of funded research indicate advanced doctoral training in human development, family studies, or a closely related field.
Research Interests span conceptual and theoretical frameworks for health interventions with adolescents—such as Positive Youth Development and Self-Determination Theory—technology applications for dietary behavior assessment, interventions promoting nutrition, physical activity, and socio-emotional well-being, and best practices for community engagement.
Across more than two decades of scholarship, her peer-reviewed publications reveal an evolving focus from foundational studies on cooperative extension ethics and leadership models to recent neuroimaging investigations of dietary decision-making and large-scale cross-cultural validations of youth-development instruments in Colombia. A consistent thread is the integration of rigorous quantitative and qualitative methods with community-engaged program design.
Grants & Projects:
- Principal Investigator, Community Advocacy Project for Students (partially sponsored by Covenant Health)
- Principal Investigator, United Future Leaders—an after-school leadership and health-promotion program for 5th–6th grade students
- Ongoing collaborations with land-grant extension systems and inter-institutional research teams
She mentors both undergraduate and graduate students in courses designed for future Extension educators and community-health specialists, and she actively partners with multidisciplinary faculty across Texas Tech and external institutions to amplify the reach and impact of her work.
