Distinguished Visiting Professor of Psychology
B.A., University of the South; M.D., Vanderbilt University; Doctor of Science (honorus causa), University of the South
Linda Mayes, M.D., is the Arnold Gesell Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics, & Psychology and Director of the Yale Child Study Center. She is also Special Advisor to the Dean of the Yale School of Medicine. And she is Distinguished Visiting Professor of Psychology at Sewanee.
Her research interests include early adversity, stress regulation, parental addiction, risk for drug use in adolescence, neural circuitry of social attachment and parental behavior, developing reward systems, electrophysiology.
After finding a place for a single Sewanee student for a summer internship at the Yale Child Study Center in the late 1990's, Dr. Mayes has guided and grown a mentored summer internship program that typically accepts 10-15 Sewanee students per year. Students participate in ongoing research projects under the mentorship of Yale Child Study Center faculty and collaborators. The Sewanee-at-Yale Summer + Semester Directed Research Program was launched spring semester 2011. Students spend a summer and the following fall semester at the Child Study Center, pursuing mentored research and coursework.
Dr. Mayes has also co-taught the Sewanee course PSYC 230: Child, Family, and Community Development in Rural Appalachia, offered for the first time in 2013. Developed with Sewanee's Professor of Psychology Karen Yu, the course is taught collaboratively by Sewanee faculty, visiting faculty from Yale, and community partners. Most recently, Dr. Mayes offered a 400-level special topics seminar at Sewanee on the Social Determinants of Mental Health & Well-Being.
Courses offered
PSYC 230 Child, Family, and Community Development in Rural Appalachia
PSYC 450 Special Topics: Social Determinants of Mental Health & Well-Being
