Director

Dr. McQuillin is interested in how communities and schools can work together to help empower young people to succeed in school and in life. He is particularly interested in how relationships between adult helpers and young people influence positive youth development. In his work, he hopes to improve these positive influences by equipping helpers with skills and practices gleaned from research evidence. Dr. McQuillin also serves as a quantitative methodologist on a broad range of research projects.

Doctoral Students

Amanda is a fifth-year doctoral candidate in the School Psychology program. She is currently completing her predoctoral internship at the Florida State University Multidisciplinary Evaluation and Consulting Center, an APA-accredited program that emphasizes school-based service delivery. Amanda received her BA in 2019 from Wake Forest University with honors in psychology. Throughout her time in YESS Lab, Amanda's program of research has centered on cultivating nurturing communities for students in schools. Her dissertation project, which was successfully defended in June 2023, developed a behavior-based measure of teacher-student relationship quality. For more information about Amanda's program of research, please visit https://amandadavis.showit.site/.

Jody is a fourth-year doctoral student in the School Psychology program. She graduated from American University in 2017 with a BA in psychology and minors in education and literature. After graduating, Jody spent two years as a teacher in Washington, DC for fifth- and sixth-grade students with language-based learning differences. Her current research interests center on the efficacy of mentor-mentee pairings and the longitudinal impacts of successful mentorship on motivation, resilience, and academic success. She is especially interested in helping programs and mentors understand how to use research to inform and improve their practices.

Savannah is a third-year doctoral student in the Clinical-Community Psychology program. She graduated from Auburn University with a B.A. in Psychology and Chemistry before earning a M.S. in Clinical Research Methods from Fordham University. Under the mentorship of Dr. Elizabeth Raposa at Fordham University, she examined the effects of mentor and youth characteristics on mentoring relationships, as well as the ways in which mentors’ attitudes and beliefs are shaped by engagement in mentoring relationships with youth. Savannah’s developing program of research seeks to promote positive youth development and social change in formal youth mentoring programs. She studies the impact and importance of supportive non-parental adult relationships during the transitional phases of adolescence and early adulthood. Currently, she is interested in developing and testing measurement tools to assess mentors’ culturally responsive behaviors. Savannah is an associate research board member of the National Mentoring Resource Center, a program of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency.

Kenzie is a second-year doctoral student in the School Psychology program. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Akron with a B.A. in Psychology and minor in Child Development. After graduating, Kenzie spent a year as a Therapeutic Behavioral Specialist working with children and adolescents on building coping and communication skills by immersing herself in their communities, schools, and home often acting as a liaison between the children and those in their environments. Her current research interests include social isolation, the impact of social media on adolescent well-being and mental health, and access to mental health care.

Bailey is a second-year doctoral student in the School Psychology program. She graduated from University of California, Santa Barbara with a B.S. in Psychological & Brain Sciences and a minor in Applied Psychology. As an undergraduate, she worked as a research assistant to cultivate prosocial skills and social-emotional learning among students at local elementary schools. As a post-bacc research assistant at University of Texas Austin, she served as the Director of School Partnerships for a mindfulness-based attention training program (Finding Focus) for high school students. Her current research interests lie at the intersection of positive psychology and supportive relationships, and how to prevent and intervene on negative mental health outcomes in children. She is currently interested in understanding the dynamics of hope, sense of belonging, and loneliness as they relate to youth mentoring and system-level school supports (e.g., MTSS, universal mental health screening).

Alena is a first-year doctoral student in the School Psychology program. She graduated from American University with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Health Promotion, focusing on early identification of pediatric social anxiety. She then spent two years as a research assistant at the University of Maryland under Dr. Nathan Fox. There, she developed the acquisition and training manual for the NIH Healthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) study and led the consortium-wide training. Her current research focus includes developing evidence-based programming and staff training for mental health and social emotional education within school systems.

Undergraduate Students

Elliot Chadwell: elliotcc@email.sc.edu

Carter DiSantis: cartergd@email.sc.edu

Staff

Trained as a School Psychologist, Devin Waldrop is an intervention and evaluation coordinator for YESS. He has supported projects ranging from large-scale multi-state empowerment evaluations to local development working refining curriculum. Devin’s research interests include bridging the practice-to-science gap and helping researchers respond to practice-based evidence.

Joshua Burrack is a video producer and multimedia artist based in Columbia, South Carolina. He has eight years’ experience marketing the University of South Carolina with digital video production, photography, and web design. He has won a dozen regional marketing awards for his video work. He also loves making music and spending time with his wonderful wife and daughter.