Rate My Professor Julie Rieker

Julie Braungart-Rieker is the Department Head and Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Colorado State University, a position she has held since 2020. She received her B.S. in Biology and Psychology from Syracuse University in 1987, M.S. in Human Development and Family Studies from The Pennsylvania State University in 1990, and Ph.D. in the same field from Penn State in 1992. Prior to CSU, Braungart-Rieker spent nearly three decades at the University of Notre Dame, starting as Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology in 1992, promoted to Associate Professor in 1998 and Full Professor in 2005. She directed the William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families from 2008 to 2019, held the Mary Hesburgh Flaherty and James F. Flaherty III College Chair from 2012 to 2020, and served as Associate Dean for Research in the College of Arts and Letters in various capacities from 2003 to 2007, along with other leadership roles including Director of the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts.

Braungart-Rieker's research focuses on social and emotional development during infancy and early childhood, including attachment security, emotion regulation, parenting sensitivity, father involvement, and prenatal and postpartum family dynamics influencing childhood obesity. Her scholarly contributions include the co-edited volume Contexts for Young Child Flourishing: Evolution, Family and Society (Oxford University Press, 2016) and key publications such as Kuo and Braungart-Rieker (2022), 'Attachment configurations to mothers and fathers during infancy predict compliance, defiance, and effortful control in toddlerhood' in Early Childhood Research Quarterly; Planalp et al. (2021), 'Positive parenting, parenting stress, and child self-regulation patterns differ across maternal demographic risk' in Journal of Family Psychology; Gettler et al. (2021) on fathers' bonding in Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health; and Tran, Braungart-Rieker, and Wang (2020) on parental discipline and child literacy in Developmental Psychology. She has received the Graduate Student Union Outstanding Mentor Award (2020), Trailblazer Award (2017), and multiple Kaneb Teaching Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (1998-1999, 2002-2003). Braungart-Rieker serves on the editorial boards of Infant Mental Health Journal (2019-present) and Journal of Experimental Child Psychology (2015-present).