Dr. Candace “Candy” Lapan (PhD, 2016) is a Research Specialist Senior at the University of Virginia. Candy oversees the implementation of the Connect Science Efficacy study, led by Principal Investigator Dr. Sara Rimm-Kaufman. The study, funded through a $1.5 million U.S. Department of Education grant, investigates the effectiveness of a 4th grade science curriculum that will teach children social-emotional skills and science concepts. Among her responsibilities, Candy’s role is to assist with selection of measures, train teachers on the curriculum, collect data, and prepare results for publication. The position aligns with Candy’s expertise in complex emotion understanding, social judgments and decision making, and the emergence of social comparison in middle to late childhood.
Candy earned her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology under the direction of Dr. Janet Boseovski in the DUCK Lab. She has published her research in several prestigious academic journals, including Child Development, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Infant and Child Development, and Merrill-Palmer Quarterly. During her time in the department, Candy was recipient of several awards, including the Weil Fellowship, and was highly active as a department citizen, serving as President of the Association for Graduate Students in Psychology.
As an undergraduate and graduate alumna of UNCG, Candy has had extensive contact with faculty, administrators, and support staff at the university. She cites the “close mentoring of the UNCG psychology faculty”, the “specialized courses in writing and statistics”, and the department’s financial support and funding opportunities as instrumental to her success. Candy credits Janet Boseovski for “hands-on mentorship…and providing me with countless amounts of mentorship and feedback which has greatly prepared me for the pursuit of a career in academia.” She also valued her membership in the DUCK Lab, stating that “the opportunity to work in a lab with two Co-Directors with different, but related, areas of expertise helped me to gain an even greater breadth of knowledge on child development…and pushed me to integrate somewhat disparate fields to come up with new and creative research questions.” Candy notes that this is a strength of the department in general, “It is a wonderful norm that faculty and students from a variety of areas of expertise join together to conduct cutting edge interdisciplinary research.”
We congratulate Candy on her success and we wish her all the best in the future.
