Rate My Professor Julie Rieker

Julie Braungart-Rieker is Professor and Department Head of the Department of Human Development and Family Studies in the College of Health and Human Sciences at Colorado State University, a position she has held since 2020. She earned her Ph.D. in 1992 and M.S. in 1990 from the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at The Pennsylvania State University, and her B.S. in 1987 from Syracuse University with majors in Biology and Psychology. Prior to joining Colorado State University, Braungart-Rieker spent 28 years at the University of Notre Dame, where she advanced from Assistant Professor (1992-1998) to Associate Professor (1998-2005) and Professor (2005-2020) in the Department of Psychology. She held the Mary Hesburgh Flaherty & James F. Flaherty III College Chair from 2012 to 2020 and served in key administrative roles, including Associate Dean for Research, Graduate Studies, and Centers (2004-2006) and Associate Dean for Faculty Appointments and Professional Development (2006-2007) in the College of Arts and Letters, Director of the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts (2003-2004), and Director of the William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families. Her research centers on social and emotional development during infancy and early childhood, with a particular emphasis on how parents, including fathers, support children's emotional regulation and self-regulation skills.

Braungart-Rieker has co-edited the volume Contexts for Young Child Flourishing: Evolution, Family and Society (Oxford University Press, 2016) and authored numerous refereed publications, including Kuo & Braungart-Rieker (2022) on attachment configurations predicting toddler compliance and effortful control in Early Childhood Research Quarterly; Planalp et al. (2021) on positive parenting, stress, and child self-regulation in Journal of Family Psychology; Gettler et al. (2021) on fathers’ bonding and infant temperament related to sleep arrangements in Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health; Tran, Braungart-Rieker, & Wang (2020) on parental physical discipline effects on child literacy in Developmental Psychology; and Braungart-Rieker et al. (2020) on toddler affect and infant attachment in Attachment & Human Development. She has received awards such as the Kaneb Teaching Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at the University of Notre Dame (2002-2003 and 1998-1999), the Master Mentor Award (1999), and the Graduate Student Union Outstanding Mentor Award. Braungart-Rieker has taught courses on infant and child development, social-emotional development across the lifespan, and research methods.