Dr. Melissa Clearfield is the Laura and Carl Peterson Chair of Social Sciences and a professor of Psychology at Whitman College in Washington state. She has been a professor there since earning a PhD in developmental psychology from Indiana University in 2001. Dr. Clearfield’s area of expertise is child development, specifically the effects of poverty and trauma on children. She has published two dozen original studies and presented at numerous conferences. She has also taught many classes on these topics, including classes on child abuse and neglect, the psychology of poverty, and how teen school shooters develop.