MSU HDFS Dr. Emilie Smith named Editor-In-Chief for the American Journal of Community Psychology 

The Society for Research on Community Research and Action (SCRA) has named Emilie Smith, Ph.D., the incoming Editor-In-Chief for the American Journal of Community Psychology, beginning on May 1, 2024. She will be the first African American and the second woman to hold this role. Dr. Smith is a professor in the MSU Department of Human Development and Family Studies, the Inaugural College of Social Science Distinguished Senior Scholar and lead on the MSU Youth Equity Project.  

AJCP is the flagship journal for SCRA, a division of the American Psychological Association, and its mission is to offer rigorous, global, community-engaged research, using multiple methodologies that help us to understand, design, and develop, and test solutions for problems affecting the human condition. The journal has an excellent five-year impact factor of 3.6, which is a measure of the frequency it has been cited and its importance in the field. 

“My mentor, William Davidson, MSU University Distinguished Professor and Professor Emeritus, was one of the early editors of this journal, so this is especially meaningful for me,” Dr. Emilie Smith said.  

Dr. Smith is a Fellow of Division 27 of the American Psychological Association. She has served as an associate editor of the American Journal of Community Psychology, on the editorial board of Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology and the Journal of Adolescent Research, and as a consulting editor for numerous other journals. She has also served on the elected Executive Board of the Society for Prevention Research and currently serves on the elected Governing Council of the Society for Research on Child Development. She was recently selected to serve on the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Math Consensus Study on Out of School Time and Marginalized Youth. 

Her work at the local and national levels has demonstrated effective approaches to engaging often lower-income ethnic minority families in prevention research using group-based family, community, and culturally informed approaches.  Her work on racial-ethnic identity and socialization among marginalized youth and social justice approaches to positive youth development is highly cited in the field.  Smith has received millions of dollars in national and foundation funding for her community-engaged research on promoting positive child and family development, along with numerous local and national awards. 

To learn more about MSU HDFS, visit hdfs.msu.edu.  

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