Member Name:

shelley-ubc

Member Since:

July 2, 2008

Last Logged in:

November 17, 2008

Hometown:

Luling, Louisiana

High Schools Attended:

Edwardsville High School

Colleges/Universities Attended:

University of Illinois

A few words about me...

Shelley Hymel received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology in 1982 from the University of Illinois. She served as a faculty member in Developmental Psychology at the University of Waterloo in Ontario (1981-1993) and is currently a professor within the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, teaching in the areas of school psychology, as well as development, learning, and culture.  

 

Within the Faculty of Education at UBC, Dr. Hymel has served as Co-Director of the Psychoeducational Research and Training Centre, a university-based setting for research and training (1996-2000, 2003-2005), and as the Associate Dean of Graduate Programs and Research (2000-2002) and as Department Head for the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology and Special Education (2006-2008).  

 

Dr. Hymel’s research addresses the interface of social and academic functioning in children and youth, with the goal of understanding the processes involved in social development to support high-risk youth in educational and community settings. Dr. Hymel works regularly with children experiencing social and behavioral difficulties and with schools and school districts that want to address the social side of learning. She has directed a summer camp program for children (1998-2002), as well as an intensive school-based program for children with behavioural difficulties (2004-2004) in partnership with the Vancouver School Board. In collaboration with the BC Crisis Centre in Vancouver, she has spearheaded the development of a web-based youth crisis line (2003-2005, ongoing) to complement telephone crisis lines, in order to reach more students in crisis (www.youthinbc.com). Currently, she part of the management committee of the Human Early Learning Partnership, an interdisciplinary research unit at UBC aimed at optimizing children’s development through early intervention. She was one of six core investigators studying youth violence in girls (2002-2007), funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (Dr. Marlene Moretti, SFU as principal investigator), and one of four leaders of the Canadian Initiative for the Prevention of Bullying (see www.cipb.ca) on the development of a national initiative on bullying and harassment in schools, funded by Canada’s National Crime Prevention Program (2003-2006). She is a co-investigator on a nationally funded Community-University Research Alliance spearheaded by Dr. Tracy Vaillancourt at McMaster University (2005-2010) examining environmental and biological factors that contribute to school bullying problems as well as an international study of bullying (2004-2007) lead by Professor Mitsuru Taki of the National Institute for Educational Research in Tokyo, Japan, and including researchers from Japan, Canada, Australia, Korea and the United States. In collaboration with Dr. Susan Swearer at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, she has established the Bullying Research Network (BRNET), an international electronic network for bullying researchers that fosters the exchange of ideas and research and enhances the possibilities for international research collaborations. Most recently, she is one of the team leaders for a National Centre of Excellence New Initiative, spearheaded by Drs. Wendy Craig (Queens University) and Debra Pepler (York University) called PREVNet, with a focus on Promoting Relationships and Eliminating Violence through partnerships and collaborations that bring together academic researchers with community agencies and schools (2006-2010).

 

Over the years, Dr. Hymel has served on review committees for the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and on the editorial board of major developmental research journals (Child Development, Developmental Psychology, Merrill Palmer Quarterly) and has served as an Associate Editor for the Merrill Palmer Quarterly developmental research journal (1996-1999).  She has published extensively in the area of social development and peer relations, with over 30 articles in refereed journals and 18 chapters, as well as an co-edited book, Loneliness in Childhood and Adolescence (Rotenberg & Hymel, 1999), and a co-edited special issue on development of self in Merrill Palmer Quarterly (Hymel & Moretti, 1999).

Interests

Education Issues