Cognition Lab

Jillene Grover Seiver, PhD

Dr. Jillene Seiver specializes in cognitive psychology.

She also studies student motivation, memory, distraction by technology, and industrial and organizational psychology.

Gratitude, Joy, & Happiness Lab

Philip Watkins, PhD

Dr. Philip Watkins is currently Emeritus Professor in the School of Psychology at Eastern Washington University. Phil’s research focuses on gratitude, joy, and their relationship to happiness.

In his research, he has found that gratitude is strongly related to happiness, gratitude predicts increased happiness in the future, and that gratitude causes increased happiness.

His research now investigates questions related to how gratitude enhances well-being, how one can become a more grateful person, the nature of gratitude toward God, the impact of modifying interpretation biases that are important to gratitude, the relationship between gratitude and joy, and the factors that enhance or inhibit gratitude.

Health Identity and
Behavior Lab

Kevin Criswell, PhD

Dr. Kevin Criswell is a clinical psychologist with a research background in cancer survivorship, cancer control and prevention, and lung cancer stigma during 2009 to 2019.

Since 2019, he is examining how students with ongoing mental and/or physical health conditions academically perform and psychosocially adjust to the experience of pursuing higher education while managing chronic illnesses.

He uses ecological and stigma-related models (e.g., Modified Labeling Theory) to guide research design, implementation, and interpretation of results.

The Laboratory for New Phenomenology

Timothy Lower, PhD

Dr. Tim Lower’s research focuses on multicultural competence, cultural identity, cultural knowledge systems, and the integration of hybrid and mixed research methods.

His therapeutic specialization focused on working with juvenile offenders and individuals with developmental disabilities.