Brianna McMillan, PhD | Morse Scholar Alumni

Morse Scholar Alumni 2013–2016

Brianna McMillan, PhD
Brianna McMillan, PhD

Current Position

Assistant Professor of Psychology
Smith College
The Little Lab

Contact

bmcmillan@smith.edu

About

Brianna McMillan is interested in how children’s everyday environments shape their learning and language development. Using experimental studies, observational methods, and secondary data analyses, her research explores how children learn during interactions with their caregivers and how environmental factors, such as background noise affect children’s learning. She is deeply interested in understanding how we can leverage our understanding of how children learn in order to promote educational equality for all children. She uses an interdisciplinary approach to bridge cognitive, developmental, social, and educational psychology in order to understand the mechanisms that contribute to children’s learning.

McMillan received a bachelor’s degree in psychology at the University of Arizona, a doctorate in cognitive psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and completed an interdisciplinary postdoctoral research fellowship at Temple University in the psychology and the early childhood education departments. Her research has previously been supported by research grants from the NIH’s National Institute of Child Health and Development, Institute of Educational Sciences, Bezos Family Foundation, and the Morse Society. She teaches courses in Psychology on topics related to child and cognitive development, as well as introductory psychology.

Education

2007 BS Psychology  University of Arizona,
2017 PhD Cognitive Psychology  University of Wisconsin-Madison
2013–2016 Morse Scholar Major Professor: Jenny Saffran, PhD Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison
2019 Postdoctoral Psychology and Early Childhood Education Temple University

In the News

Selected Publications