Rate My Professor Margaret Caughy

Dr. Caughy's scholarship combines developmental science, epidemiology, and public health to study risk and resilience contexts for young children in ethnic minority families facing economic instability, racism, discrimination, and sociopolitical stress. She directs the Social Determinants of Child Development lab and is Principal Investigator of the NICHD-funded Dallas Project on Education Pathways, a longitudinal study of over 400 African American and Latinx preschoolers from low-income backgrounds tracked from age 2.5 through 7th grade, focusing on self-regulation, academic achievement, parenting, and ethnic-racial socialization. Active grants include NIMH R01 "Latinx mental health from early childhood through the transition to adulthood" (MPI, 2024-2029), NICHD R01 "The role of fathering in the language development among young, low-income African American and Latino children" (PI, 2020-2025), and NICHD R01 "Self-regulation and the transition to middle school" (PI, 2013-2024). Notable publications encompass "Stability of parenting profiles in early childhood among African American mothers experiencing poverty" (Owen et al., 2023, Early Childhood Research Quarterly), "Acculturation stress magnifies child depression effect of stressful life events for Latinx youth three years later" (Walsdorf et al., 2023, Journal of Latinx Psychology), "Preparing Black and Latinx children for police encounters: Caregiver response profiles and child self-regulation" (Osborne et al., 2023, Journal of Research on Adolescence), and "Responding to racism at school: Ethnic-racial socialization and the academic engagement of Black and Latinx youth" (Osborne et al., 2022, Child Development). Honors include the Bill and June Flatt Outstanding Faculty Research Award (UGA, 2021), University of Texas Regent’s Outstanding Teaching Award (2014), President’s Scholar Award for Teaching Excellence (2016), and National Academy of Sciences Frontiers of Research on Children, Youth, and Families Initiative award (1998).