National Research Institute for Child and Family Studies - Research Fellows

Mary E. Curtis, Ph.D.

Dr. Curtis is a Professor of Education and Founding Director of the Center for Special Education at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA, a center dedicated to understanding and promoting the knowledge and skills needed by educators to improve the teaching of students with disabilities.

She is the author of numerous articles on reading diagnosis and remediation, the role of vocabulary in comprehension and the reading skills of at-risk teens. She is a member of the Adult Literacy Research Working Group, and has provided technical assistance to the Division of Adult Education and Literacy, Office of Vocational and Adult Education, for its Student Achievement in Reading (STAR) Pilot Program.

Before coming to Lesley in 1999, Dr. Curtis directed the Boys Town Reading Center, where she oversaw research and development on Reading Is FAME^®, a remedial reading curriculum shown to reverse reading failure in older adolescents. She earned her Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, and she has been an Associate Professor of Education at Harvard University, Associate Director of the Harvard Reading Laboratory and a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Learning Research and Development Center (Pittsburgh, PA).

Patrick C. Friman, Ph.D.

Dr. Patrick Friman, a clinical psychologist, is currently the Director of Boys Town Outpatient Behavioral Pediatrics and Family Services. He is the former Director of Clinical Training and Associate Chairman of Psychology at the University of Nevada at Reno. Other previous appointments include faculty positions at the Universities of Nebraska and Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Pediatrics and the John Hopkins School of Medicine in Behavioral Biology. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Kansas and completed his internship and a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Behavioral Pediatrics at the University of Kansas Medical School.

Dr. Friman has published more than 140 scientific articles and chapters involving behavioral pediatrics and behavior disorders of childhood. Generally, his research addresses the well-child gap between pediatrics and clinical psychology. Dr. Friman is the current editor of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis and serves on the Editorial Boards of nine other scientific journals. He is a fellow in Divisions 25 (behavior analysis) 37 (Child, Youth, and Family Services) and 54 (pediatric psychology) of the American Psychological Association.

Dr. Larzelere is an Associate Professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska. He received his Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies from Pennsylvania State University in 1979. He was an NIMH postdoctoral fellow with Murray Straus at the University of New Hampshire and with Gerald Patterson at the Oregon Social Learning Center. He has over 70 publications, including research on parental discipline, research methods, clinical and research assessments, and outcome evaluations for children and adolescents in out-of-home treatment at Boys Town. He is currently collaborating with Dr. Diana Baumrind and analyzing Canadian longitudinal data to differentiate effective from counterproductive parental disciplinary responses.

Michael L. Handwerk, Ph.D.

Dr. Handwerk is the Director of Clinical Services, Research, and Internship Training at Father Flanagan's Boys Home. He has been at Boys Town for 9 years. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1997. He has published over 20 articles and chapters on the assessment and treatment of child and adolescent behavior problems. In addition to clinical activities for the youth residents at Boys Town, Dr. Handwerk also sees children and families from the greater Omaha area in the newly developed Boys Town Behavioral Pediatrics and Family Services Outpatient Clinic.