Education, Children and Youth

Educational psychologist Susan Sheridan is the director of Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families and Schools. Her main area of focus is on the importance of effective relationships for children’s healthy development. She is particularly interested in identifying meaningful ways to establish home–school partnerships to support children’s social, behavioral and academic skills. In addition to several other awards, Sheridan was inducted into the National Academy of Education in 2024 for her career in educational and school psychology. (Updated May 2025)

Kathleen Lodl has worked in the field of youth development for the past 25 years. As State 4-H Program Administrator and Associate Dean of University of Nebraska–Lincoln Extension, Lodl is responsible for leading a 4-H program that reaches over 140,000 youth. To date, Lodl has secured more than $10 million in grant funding to develop programming that improves the lives of young people and their families.

Holly Hatton research centers around emotional well-being, mindfulness, and social-emotional learning in early childhood education. Her research has an emphasis on equity, systems change, and the ethics of care. She is also the principal investigator of CHIME (Cultivating Healthy Intentional Mindful Educators), a federally funded intervention which aims to support early childhood educators’ mindfulness, emotional regulation, and stress resilience. She has led or co-led more than $9 million in externally funded research from agencies such as the U.S. Administration for Children and Families, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the USDA and more. (Updated July 2025).