Ally Murphy, Ph.D.

In a nutshell, my passion is to use my research, service, and teaching to help families to be resilient and cope with their challenges.

My dissertation research on Single Mother Families suggested that parent education and social support are the main contributors to promote cognitive functioning in middle childhood. To put my research into action, I am currently working on a program called “Promoting Resilient Single-Parent Families” (PRSPF). The program will be two-fold: supporting the parents and providing mentorship to the children. This program is for single-parent students at the Regional Campuses and their children.  In 2017, 31.32% of families in Butler County were single-parent households with children; this program will be an important first step for Miami University to assist these families. I am hopeful that this program will be successful and will generate more grants to expand the PRSPF program to the local community in Butler County. This program will expose students to service-learning by involving them as mentors for the children of single-parent families. 

The other project that I started since Fall 2019 addresses adverse childhood experience (ACE). I have submitted a letter of intent with an abstract titled “Prolonged Stress in Children and Adolescents” to American Psychological Association for a special issue in November 2019. In conjunction with my passion, I am also in the process of proposing trauma-informed certification to those working in human services in various fields (teachers, social workers, caregivers, nurses, etc.). As an educator and a researcher focusing on families-at-risk and resilience, I want to be sure that my students, who will be future teachers, social workers, nurses, etc. to be aware of the effect of trauma due to adverse childhood experiences that they will see as they start working in their field. This idea is closely connected to my research, service and teaching.