John Colombo, Ph.D.

 

 

Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Psychology

1415 Jayhawk Boulevard

426 Fraser Hall

 

Interim Director, Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies

1000 Sunnyside Avenue

1052 Dole Human Development Center

 

Contact Information:

 

Psychology Department

(785) 864-4131

Schiefelbusch Life Span Institute

(785) 864-4295

Wakarusa Research Facility laboratory

(785) 312-5345

Edwards Campus laboratory

(785) 864-8590

Carlson/Colombo laboratory, Smith Center, KU Med Center

(913) 588-5743

Email

colombo@ku.edu

 

History

I received my PhD in Psychology (1981) from the State University of New York at Buffalo.   After one year at Youngstown State University (1981-1982), and six years (1982-1988) as a research associate with the Bureau of Child Research at the University of Kansas, I joined the faculty of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Kansas in 1988, and have been a member of the Department of Psychology since January of 2002.

 

Research

My major research interests are in the developmental cognitive neuroscience of attention and learning, with a special focus on early individual differences in these areas and how they relate to the typical and atypical development of cognitive and intellectual function. I conduct research in laboratories at the KU Edwards Campus and the KU Medical Center, as well as at the Wakarusa Research Facility in Lawrence.

 

Collaborations

I collaborate with a number of faculty members at the University of Kansas and elsewhere.  Currently,  my collaborations include ongoing research and writing projects with the following scientists at other institutions:

Dr. Susan E. Carlson, Department of Dietetics and Nutrition, the University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, KS, USA

Dr. Laura Caulfield, Human Nutrition, Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Johns Hopkins State University, Baltimore, MD, USA

Nelly Zavaleta, MD, Instituto de Investigaciones Nutricional, Lima (Molina), Peru

Dr. David Thomas (Department of Psychology) and Dr. Tay Kennedy (Department of Nutrition), Oklahoma State University

Dr. John Richards, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA

Dr. Derek Houston, University of Indiana School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA

 

Publications

A list of my publications (with some links to .pdf copies) can be obtained by clicking here.

 

 

Administrative Duties, Service, and Affiliations

In addition to my research program and teaching, my administrative responsibilities at the University of Kansas also include the following:

 

Interim Director of the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies

Co-Director and Principal Investigator, University of Kansas Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (KIDDRC).

Co-Investigator and Director of the Participant Recruitment Core of the KU Center for Biobehavioral Neuroscience in Communicative Disorders

Faculty chair, Human Subjects Committee on the Lawrence Campus (HSCL). HSCL is the campus-wide institutional review board for research conducted with human subjects. The committee is administered by the University of Kansas Center for Research, Inc.

 

In addition to my primary faculty appointment in Psychology, I am also an affiliated faculty member with the following interdisciplinary programs:

Child Language Doctoral Program   (Mabel Rice, Director)

Clinical Child Psychology Doctoral Program    (Michael Roberts, Director)

Neurosciences Doctoral Program   (Eli Michaelis, Director)

 

 National Service

Secretary of the International Society for Infant Studies (ISIS)

Associate Editor for Child Development, the flagship journal of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD)

Editorial Board member for the following journals

Infancy

Infant Behavior and Development

Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

 

Teaching

I teach a number of courses in various departments at the University of Kansas, as my other duties allow.

 

 

 

NUMBER

TITLE

LAST OFFERED

ENROLLMENT

PSYC 318

Cognitive Psychology

Fall 2007

200-400

PSYC 333

Child Psychology

Spring 2007

300-500

PSYC 430

Cognitive Development

Fall 2001

50-100

PSYC 480

Independent Study

current (Fall ’08)

5-15

BIOL 449

Laboratory/Fieldwork in Human Biology

current (Fall ’08)

1-5

PSYC 770

Cognitive Development

Spring 2005

15-30

SPLH 764

Infant Development (with N. Brady and S. Barlow)

Spring 2007

10-20

PSYC 800

Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience

Spring 2004

5-10

PSYC 800

Cognition in Infancy

Spring 2003

5-10

PSYC 815

Design and Analysis for Developmental Research

current (Fall ’08)

10-15