Rate My Professor Margaret Caughy

Margaret O'Brien Caughy is the Georgia Athletic Association Professor in Family Health Disparities within the Department of Human Development and Family Science at the University of Georgia, advancing Health Science through interdisciplinary research on child development and public health. She earned her Sc.D. in Maternal and Child Health from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in 1992, M.Ed. in Human Development from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1989, and B.S. in Psychology from Texas A&M University in 1986. Prior to her arrival at UGA in 2016, Dr. Caughy held positions for 17 years at the University of Texas School of Public Health's Dallas Regional Campus, progressing from Assistant Professor to Professor with tenure and Interim Regional Dean from 2015 to 2016. Her earlier career included roles as Assistant Scientist, Research Associate at Johns Hopkins Department of Maternal and Child Health, and Instructor at University of Maryland.

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).