I began my undergraduate training at the Northern Virginia Community College, majoring in Music. After changing my major at least 4 times, I finally discovered Psychology and transferred to George Mason University in the Fall of 1978. After only 1 semester I took off nearly 8 years to have a career in retail management for both Kmart and Marshalls. I returned to GMU in the Fall of 1986 to complete my B.A. in Psychology. I received my M.A. in 1993 and my Ph.D. from George Mason University in 1998. As a graduate student my research focused on the mathematical shape of the forgetting function with Alan Boneau. While at GMU, I also taught as adjunct faculty. In 1997 I took a position as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Carnegie Mellon University. At CMU, I worked with Lynne Reder and Marsha Lovett on developing and testing a computational model of working memory. The Fall Semester of 2000 was my first semester at Shepherd.
Since I’ve been at Shepherd I’ve continued to teach Memory & Cognition, Psychology of Learning, and Statistics for the Social Sciences. I’ve also had the opportunity to try my hand at Introduction to Psychology, Sensation & Perception, and several special topics courses. In the Spring of 2002 I was selected to be Director of the Shepherd Honors Program, a position I held until August of 2005. During my time as Director I taught two Honors courses: Perceptions of Beauty (team taught with Mike Austin, K. B. Basseches, and Laura Renninger) and Psychology Special Topics: Consciousness. One semester after leaving Honors I was elected Chair of the Psychology Department, a position I held until the Spring of 2013. Following a three-year break, I was reelected Chair in the spring of 2016 and served in that position until October of 2018.