Jennifer Dyer-Seymour

Jennifer Dyer-Seymour is a full professor of psychology at CSU Monterey Bay. She started at CSUMB in 2004 and has been instrumental in growing the psychology program from a minor program in Social and Behavioral Sciences into one of the most popular majors on the campus. She was the coordinator/chair of the program from 2009 to 2019. In her work as chair she focused on guiding the faculty in the department to offer students a rigorous and science-based program that will prepare them to be science-literate and strong communicators.

As a faculty member, Jennifer teaches across the curriculum in psychology, conducts research with students, and serves the campus and local community. In 2019 she was honored to receive CSUMB's campus award for Excellence in Teaching. In recent terms she has taught the capstone course and in so doing guides students as they complete their final project as psychology majors. In that class she takes a particular focus on oral communication so students learn to tell others about the work they have done.

Her research work focuses on the beginning and ending of formal schooling: kindergarten and college graduation. In 2017 she collaborated with the Read to Me Project, a non-profit in Salinas that teaches 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students to read to their pre-K siblings at home in order to better prepare the little ones for entry into kindergarten. In 2020 she is directing capstone students to interview first-year students for a longitudinal study examining why some graduate and some do not graduate from college.

Her service work on the campus includes her role as faculty-at-large on the Executive Committee of the Academic Senate, 2015-2019.