Hal Grotevant is the Rudd Family Foundation Chair in Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research focuses on relationships in adoptive families, and on identity development in adolescents and young adults. More generally, his interests include child and adolescent development and family dynamics. Dr. Grotevant is also the Principal Investigator on the Minnesota/Texas Adoption Research Project, a 20-year longitudinal research study that focuses on the consequences of variations in adoptive family - birth family contact arrangements. The study has examined how relationships have evolved in the adoptive kinship networks across Wave 1 (middle childhood), Wave 2 (adolescence), and Wave 3 (emerging adulthood). The study includes adopted persons (who are now in their 20s), their adoptive parents, and their birth relatives. The project has most recently been funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Science Foundation, and William T. Grant Foundation. Grotevant's work has resulted in over 100 articles published in professional journals as well as several books, including Openness in Adoption: Exploring Family Connections (with Ruth McRoy, Sage Publications, 1998). He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the National Council on Family Relations; Senior Research Fellow of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute; former Board President of Adoptive Families of America; and recipient of research, teaching, and leadership awards from the University of Minnesota, where he was Distinguished University Teaching Professor of Family Social Science until his move to Amherst in 2008. In fall 2009, he received the 2009 Outstanding Faculty for Outreach and Engagement Award from the College of Natural Sciences, UMass Amherst.

Click here to see his Curriculum Vitae.

Jen Dolan is the Program Manager for the Rudd Adoption Research Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.    Ms. Dolan served as a Program Manager for the Health Education, Off-Campus Federal Work Study and Service Learning program at Holyoke Community College for the past fifteen years.   Her undergraduate degree is in social work and her master’s degree is in public health.  Currently she is pursuing her doctoral degree from the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts.  Her research is focused on identifying issues and finding solutions for white parents who are raising adopted children of color.  The youngest of her three children is an adopted boy of Filipino descent.

Lynn Von Korff is the first Rudd Adoption Research Program Postdoctorial Fellow in Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research focuses on interactions in adoptive families, narrative identity formation, and adolescent and young adult development. She received her Ph.D. in 2008 from the University of Minnesota where she worked on the Minnesota-Texas Adoption Research Program (MTARP). Lynn also teaches Family Research Quantitative Methods at the University of Minnesota.