Jennifer L. Tanner, Ph.D. is a developmental psychologist who trained in Human Development and Family Studies at The Pennsylvania State University from 1996 to 2001.
The Penn State Degree in Human Development and Family Studies is the only developmental psychology program in the top 10 that focuses its objective on life span psychology, versus a traditional emphasis on the earliest years of life.
1. Stanford University
2. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
3. University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
4. University of California at Berkeley
5. Harvard University
6. The Pennsylvania State University—University Park
(Program in Human Development & Family Studies)
7. Yale University
8. University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign
9. University of Virginia
10. University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill
The basic objectives of the Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) program, at The Pennsylvania State University, are the following: to expand knowledge about the development and functioning of individuals, small groups, and families; to improve methods for studying processes of human development and change; and to create and disseminate improved techniques and strategies for enhancing individual and family functioning, helping people learn to cope more effectively with problems of living, and preventing normal life problems from becoming serious difficulties. The program takes a life-span perspective, recognizing that the most important aspects of development and types of life tasks and situations vary from infancy through old age, as well as through the life cycle of the family, and that each phase of the life cycle is a precursor to the next. There is a firm commitment to interdisciplinary and multiprofessional approach to these objectives and to the development of competence in applying rigorous methods of inquiry. All students are expected to acquire a broad interdisciplinary base of knowledge and to develop competence in depth in one of four primary program areas: family development, individual development human development intervention, or methodology.
[Graduate Study in Psychology, pg. 685, American Psychological Association, 2008]