Dr. Janis Kupersmidt
Senior Research Scientist
Dr. Kupersmidt is a child clinical psychologist, who has published more than 100 peer-reviewed chapters and scientific articles on topics related to youth mentoring, prevention science, the social and emotional development of children and adolescents, children’s peer relationships, and aggression. She developed and evaluated the first standardized, web-based, pre-match mentor training program that includes the widely used, “Building the Foundation” course, and created the Mentoring Central website that hosts a variety of trainings for mentors, mentees, parents/caregivers of mentees, and mentoring program staff. Currently, she is working on updating and evaluating a web-based training for mentors working with youth impacted by substance misuse in a grant from NIH. She has also studied factors that affect mentoring outcomes children in foster care, children of incarcerated parents, and court-involved youth. Dr. Kupersmidt is a co-author of the third and fourth editions of the Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring (EEPM), which provides youth mentoring programs with research-based practices for implementing effective youth mentoring programs. In addition, she has co-authored several Supplements to the EEPM that provide guidance to mentoring programs implementing specific models of mentoring, including group, peer, e-mentoring, workplace, and STEM mentoring. Dr. Kupersmidt received her doctorate in psychology from Duke University and is a former tenured associate professor in psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.