Kathleen Moritz Rudasill, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Educational Psychology

CYFS Associate Director for Faculty Outreach

Kathy Moritz Rudasill serves as a liaison between CYFS and faculty seeking grant support. She also co-directs the Early Development and Learning Lab with fellow CYFS faculty affiliate Victoria Molfese. Her research addresses how children's individual differences (particularly in temperament) relate to academic and social success, along with how this relationship is moderated and mediated by classroom processes. The aims of this research are to gain insight into how specific classroom processes may facilitate or hinder success for students with particular temperamental characteristics. Though much is known about risk factors related to demographic data (e.g., poverty), comparatively little is known about other reasons – such as the match between child temperament and classroom processes – that children fail academically or socially.

Moritz Rudasill's research focuses on unpacking this risk to advance understanding of how classroom processes work, for whom and why. She believes this is particularly important with preschool and early elementary-aged children who are facing some of their first academic and social challenges. However, she also believes it critical to continue investigating the role of mechanisms such as student-teacher relationships on outcomes for students in middle and high school.

Moritz Rudasill earned her doctorate in educational psychology from the University of Virginia. She worked as an assistant professor in the Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology at the University of Louisville for five years before moving to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2011.