Alumna to Discuss How Truman Helped Guide Her Career Path

Kelly Mahaffy (‘18) will visit campus March 24-25 to share with students how the knowledge and skills she gained at Truman prepared her to craft a unique interdisciplinary career pathway.

Mahaffy is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in developmental psychology at the University of Connecticut. She studies the neurobiology and neurochemistry of fluent and dysfluent reading comprehension with a focus on better understanding of which neural mechanisms support reading comprehension development. Through work at the University of Connecticut and the Yale Child Studies Center, Mahaffy has developed expertise in early literacy, the neurobiology, neurochemistry and behavioral profiles of students with dyslexia, dyslexia intervention and response, and community partnerships between educational neuroscientists and schools. She is currently working on her dissertation which will clarify if adolescent readers of differing reading comprehension profiles are sensitive to the complex statistics of written language and leverage this information to support reading comprehension.

During her time on campus, she will speak to students in several courses including ED 593 Psychological Foundations of Education, ED 621G Psychology of Reading, ENG 216 New Majors Seminar, ENG 375 Career Seminar, and ENG 602G: Cognitive Literary Theory. Her public talk, “More than the Sum of its Parts: A journey from Reader to Researcher,” will take place at 7 p.m. March 25 in Ophelia Parrish 2210.

Mahaffy credits her unique, interdisciplinary perspective to her time in the English, education, and child studies and cognitive science programs at Truman.