University Don Bosco

Professor and Researcher, Instituto de Investigación y Formación Pedagógica

About

I am a professor and a researcher in the Institute for Research and Pedagogic Training at the University Don Bosco (UDB) in El Salvador. Most of my research has focused on social issues that affect youth's positive development. My main areas of interest are youth violence, community violence prevention programs, especially youth mentoring initiatives, and youth and public policy in Latin America.

After receiving a bachelor's degree in psychology from UCA, I was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to pursue my graduate studies (MA and PhD) in social psychology at Loyola University Chicago. In 2008, I completed my doctorate and received a best poster award for my doctoral work from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI; Division 9 of the American Psychological Association) during the 2008 Biennial Convention. That same year I started working as a postdoctoral fellow in the Institute for Health Research and Policy (IHRP) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) until 2010. I also worked at the University of Central America (UCA) in the Department of Sociology and Politcal Sciences during 2011.

In 2010, I helped launch the Salvadoran Journal of Psychology and became its first editor. More recently, in 2011, I was elected as the regional Vice-President for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean of the Interamerican Psychological Society (IPS) for the 2011-2013 period. My most current collaboration as a coauthor, How Effective Are Mentoring Programs for Youth? A Systematic Assessment of the Evidence, appeared in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest (PSPI) (DuBois, Portillo, Rhodes, Silverthorn, & Valentine, 2011).

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