Empowering Settings and Voices for Social Change

Mark S. Aber is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and past Faculty Fellow at the Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on collaborative community-based intervention, contextual influences on individuals' understanding of race, racial equity in public schooling, and school racial climate. Aber earned his B.A. in psychology and philosophy from Yale University in 1981and hisPh.D. in psychology from the University of Virginia in 1989. He currently serves as President of the Society for Community Research and Action (SCRA; APA Division 27). He has served as a member of the Council of Community Psychology Program Directors, on the editorial board of the American Journalof Community Psychology. Kenneth I. Maton is Professor of Psychology and director of the Community-Social Psychology Ph.D. Program in Human Services Psychology at the University of Maryland in Baltimore County. His research focuses on empoweringcommunity settings, minority youth achievement, and the community psychology of religion. Maton earned his B.A. in psychology from Yale University in 1974 and his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Illinois in 1985. He is past-president of the Society for Community Research and Action (SCRA; APA Division 27), past member of the APA Council of Representatives and of the APA Task Force on Urban Psychology. He has served on the editorial boards of American Journal of CommunityPsychology, Analysis of Social Issues and Public Policy, and Journal of Community Psychology. Edward Seidman is Senior Vice President, Program, at the William T. Grant Foundation and Professor of Applied Psychology at New York University. At the Foundation, he is particularly interested in facilitating higher quality theory, measurement, and intervention research on youth-serving organizations that successfully impacts practice and policy. Before coming to the Foundation, his research examined thenature and course of the positive developmental trajectories of economically at-risk urban adolescents, and how these trajectories are affected by the social contexts of family, peers, school, and neighborhood. The impact of school transitions on these developmental trajectories and its implications for primary prevention and the promotion of well-being and educational reform are of particular interest to him. He is a Professor of Applied Psychology at New York University, and previously at theUniversities of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) and Manitoba, as well as the Vice President and Dean, Research, Demonstration, and Policy at Bank Street College.