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A recent graduate of UMBC's Applied Developmental Psychology combined master’s/Ph.D. program, Christine Reiner Hess has always had a strong interest in child psychology. When she read about the child intervention work that UMBC professor of psychology Douglas Teti was conducting, she knew she had found her field.

At the time, Teti was studying how mothers adjusted after giving birth to infants hospitalized in a neonatal intensive care unit due to prematurity and low birth weight. “I was fortunate to be able to join the project and complete my master's thesis from the findings,” says Hess. In her thesis, Hess explored the role of personal and professional support in mothers’ adjustment to their medically at-risk infants, and the moderating effect of child characteristics in predicting maternal adjustment. Continuing at UMBC in the doctoral program, Hess examined in her dissertation how maternal confidence and maternal knowledge of infant development predict the quality of mother-infant play interactions. In addition, she addressed whether a biological or environmental risk index is a better predictor of child development in the first few months of life for medically at-risk infants.

The Applied Developmental Psychology graduate program's focus on in-depth practicum experiences gives students such as Hess opportunities to define their areas of interests through hands-on, applied research experiences. After receiving her Ph.D. in May, Hess has continued her work with at-risk children at UMBC through a post-doctoral position with Teti on a five-year research grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to evaluate a short-term, focused intervention program targeting African-American pre-term infants and their mothers and fathers. Teti is the principal investigator who wrote the grant and oversees the project. Hess supervises the graduate student interventionists and also works with the families to provide parent education to help foster parents’ understanding of their preterm infants’ strengths and unique abilities. The project is conducted in collaboration with two hospitals in Baltimore and two in Washington, DC, where families are recruited for the study.

“I am very fortunate in having Chris as the project's intervention coordinator,” says Teti. “She has done a superb job in working with our participant families, liaising with our hospital sites and working with project staff. She has become a first-rate professional colleague. In addition to her project activities, Chris is actively contributing to the applied developmental literature with chapters and empirical papers based on her current work."

Hess also works part-time as the developmental psychologist in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Follow-up Clinic at the University of Maryland Medical System. In this position, Hess conducts developmental assessments with high-risk, preterm and low-birth-weight infants and toddlers and makes recommendations for early intervention services. “I enjoy the combination of research and clinical work that I am doing after having completed my degree,” says Hess. "It is so rewarding to work with high-risk children and their families and to feel that I can help make a difference in their lives.”