Lab Members
Current Students
Piper Bordes is a first-year graduate student in the Cognitive and Brain Sciences program working in Dr. Katie Cherry’s lab. She graduated from Louisiana State University with a bachelors degree in Psychology and minor in Sociology in the spring of 2022. Upon graduating, she received the Distinguished Undergraduate Researcher Award for her work on Age, Emotion Regulation and Cognition After the 2016 Flood with Dr. Cherry. Her research interests include healthy aging and resiliency after natural disasters. Outside of school, she enjoys spending time with friends, family, and her pets, traveling, and grabbing coffee from her favorite shop, PJ’s Coffee.
Graduation
Dr. Cherry and Elise Whitlock (December, 2019)
Kennedy Simon, Anna Pham, Piper Bordes and Dr. Cherry (May, 2022)
Kennedy Simon and Dr. Cherry (May 2022)
Alumni
As a graduate student in Cherry’s Adult Development and Aging Lab, Jennifer was instrumental
in the Louisiana Healthy Aging Study and the LHAS Hurricane Katrina Disaster Assessment.
Today, Dr. Silva Brown is currently the Dean of the School of Humanities and Social
Sciences at Drury University in Springfield, Missouri. She oversees the largest academic
unit on Drury’s campus, which also houses the most diverse program offerings (14 majors
and 24 minors/pre-professional programs). As dean, Dr. Silva Brown is responsible
for overseeing program assessment, curricular enhancement, student retention, academic
program budgets, and evaluation of faculty. Additionally, she acts as a liaison/advocate
on behalf of her faculty with upper administration. Dr. Silva Brown continues to teach
psychology courses, including Health Psychology and Psychoneuroimmunology, and maintains
an active research lab.
As a graduate student in Dr. Cherry’s Adult Development and Aging lab, Susan was involved
in conducting experiments examining the contributions of working memory and processing
speed on age-related changes in skill acquisition, attributions of forgetfulness in
younger and older adults, and the impact of knowledge of age-related memory changes
on perceptions of forgetfulness. While in Cherry’s lab, she received the Adult Development
and Aging (Division 20) of the American Psychological Association (APA) Retirement
Research Foundation Award for Completed Masters Research and the Life Course and Aging
Studies Initiative Graduate Enhancement Award. Today, Dr. Brigman is the founding
Director of the Psychology Program at Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University
in Baton Rouge, LA. Her teaching interests include developmental psychology, to include
Lifespan, Child, Adolescent, and Aging.
As a graduate student in Dr. Cherry’s Adult Development and Aging lab, Cindy was instrumental
in conducting experiments on metamemory in later life, including measuring people’s
knowledge and beliefs about memory aging and self-reported practical memory concerns
in daily life. Today, Dr. Reese-Melancon’s work is focused on prospective memory,
or how we remember to do things in the future. Dr. Reese-Melancon’s primary interest
is in how prospective memory performance and memory beliefs change with age. She also
conducts research examining basic memory mechanisms.
Allison McBride presenting her research at the 2017 ASPIRE conference with Katie Stanko.
Allison is now a graduate student at Boston University.
Dr. Katie Stanko is a Cognitive & Brain Sciences program Alumni. She worked along with Dr. Cherry, Katie to investigate successful aging after disaster, including qualitative and quantitative methodology.