Health and Human Development faculty members named Distinguished Professors 

Mary Jane De Souza, Distinguished Professor of Kinesiology and Physiology, is a scientific leader in the field of women’s health and exercise, as well as a classroom teacher and mentor in the Department of Kinesiology at Penn State. She has been widely recognized for her work in defining and understanding the impact of the female athlete triad, a syndrome that results from a combination of disordered eating, disrupted menstrual cycles, and decreased bone mass. De Souza has also been instrumental in expanding the research of relative energy deficiency in athletes to include a male athlete triad, in which insufficient energy intake may reduce sperm count and lead to bone density concerns. De Souza is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Kinesiology and the American College of Sport Medicine, the latter of which recognized her with their prestigious Citation Award for Career Achievement. She also received the College of Health and Human Development Pauline Schmitt Russell Distinguished Research Career Award in 2019.

In addition to her work as a researcher, De Souza is a distinguished teacher, educating undergraduates in key, early foundational courses in Kinesiology. She is an active adviser to doctoral students and postdoctoral scholars, engaging them in her team’s scholarship and collaborating with several to this day.

Douglas Teti, Distinguished Professor of Human Development and Family Studies, is an accomplished researcher and a national expert in fields encompassing child and family development, parent mental health, and infant sleep physiology and neuroscience. Teti received his first NIH grant on the development of infants whose mothers were depressed in 1987 and has worked expansively in the field and related disciplines ever since. He has also served as associate editor for multiple journals and has edited multiple editions of the respected text, Research Methods in Developmental Science. He was the recipient of the Evan G. and Helen G. Pattishall Outstanding Research Achievement Award in the College of Health and Human Development in 2015.

Teti has held critical leadership roles at the University, including department head of Human Development and Family Studies since 2014 and associate director of the Social Science Research Institute from 2011 through 2014, in which he has promoted research and scientific excellence in the social and behavioral sciences. As department head, he has led the HDFS graduate program into top national rankings for that discipline for many years running. Teti is also an accomplished teacher and mentor, serving as doctoral dissertation adviser to more than 20 Penn State students, including two who are now Penn State faculty members.

Krista Wilkinson, Distinguished Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders, is a leader in studying and understanding how individuals with complex communication needs, including impaired visual and motor functioning, process information in order to inform effective design for augmentative and alternative communication technology. Her work is internationally recognized as providing a critical bridge between basic and applied sciences in communication disorders and interventions for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. She is an elected fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and has served as editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology.

In addition to her work as a researcher, Wilkinson has distinguished herself in community outreach and engaged learning opportunities for students. She founded the inclusive For Good Musical Performance Troupe for youth with intellectual challenges and their peers, which engages students from the College of Health and Human Development and involves a partnership with the State College Area School District. Wilkinson has organized translation opportunities for students of American Sign Language and has created a course on supportive performance that extends these efforts further into the Penn State student community. For this work, she has received the Leadership in Outreach Scholarship from the College of Health and Human Development, the Barash Award for Human Services from the Office of Human Resources, and the President’s Award for Excellence in Student Engagement.