Faculty Bios
Jane Graves Smith, Ed.D.
Phone: 503.493.6537
Email: jsmith@cu-portland.edu
Office: George R. White Library & Learning Center 315C
Teaching Emphases: Marriage and Family, Parenting, Introductory Psychology, and Internship Supervision.
Dr. Jane Graves Smith presently serves as Professor of Psychology. Beginning in 1992, Jane served as a counselor in the CU Counseling Center then in 1996, with input from community professionals and academics, moved the current psychology major from vision to reality. She has been blessed to watch the program continue to grow in both academic rigor and a focus on service from its very conception.
In 2005, Jane completed her Ed.D. in Educational Leadership: Curriculum and Instruction at Portland State University. With a year spent at a Title I school in Vancouver, Washington collecting data, her dissertation was completed and titled Parental Involvement in a Low-Income School: A Case Study. Past research projects have included a survey of Work/Family Balance, a study of Teaching Techniques to Promote Student Advocacy for Children and Families, and a mixed methods exploration of the Experience of Midlife for Women. Jane's current research is titled: The Practices of Mindfulness and Yoga as Techniques for the Management of Stress in College Students.
Jane has been happily married to husband and Concordia University Vice Provost, Dr. Glenn Smith, for the past 32 years and together they have raised two children. Carlee, a married middle school counselor in Utah, and Dylan, who works for the Jessie F. Richardson Foundation facilitating college student service to elders in Nicaragua.
Erin Mueller, Ph.D.
Phone: 503.493.6206
Email: emueller@cu-portland.edu
Office: George R. White Library & Learning Center 315A
Teaching Emphases: Lifespan Development, Research Methods, Global Psychology, History and Systems of Psychology, Senior Thesis Supervision, and Psi Chi Advisor.
Dr. Erin Mueller, Professor of Psychology, joined the faculty at Concordia University in 2007. She received her Ph.D. from Brigham Young University in 1997, and then she completed a clinical residency and research fellowship at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). Prior to coming to Concordia, she served as an Assistant Professor in the Child Development Rehabilitation Center at OHSU. She is a licensed psychologist in the State of Oregon, and she has worked in hospital and school settings, as well as in applied research.
Erin is a native Iowan, but has lived in the Portland area since 1996. She and her husband, Reed (also a psychologist), have two children. In addition to teaching, Erin's service passions are global justice issues, including poverty, hunger, and HIV/AIDS. As part of this ministry, she has traveled to Mhlosheni, Swaziland several times, and she recently designed a study abroad program in Cape Town, South Africa, for Concordia students.
Reed Mueller, Ph.D.
Phone: 503.493.6535
Email: rmueller@cu-portland.edu
Office: George R. White Library & Learning Center 315B
Teaching Emphases: Human Sexuality, Community Psychology, Counseling Theory, Psychology of Personality, Abnormal Psychology, Social Science Research Methods, Positive Psychology, Psychology of Religion
Reed is more or less a local, having grown up in East Multnomah County where he now lives with Erin, his wife, and their two children, Jackson and Abigail. The best times in his life seem to correlate with those moments he's with his family as they play games, travel, or even as he coaches one of the teams that the kids might be on. That said it's also a great joy to sneak away just with Erin.
Prior to beginning work as a visiting associate professor at Concordia, he focused his professional efforts in two spheres, simultaneously. In the first, he served as a pastor of a local church for 13 years, beginning in 1998. This role afforded him the opportunity for frontline, hands on work with diverse groups of people experiencing equally diverse joys and sorrows. The community of faith he was honored to lead worked very hard to create relationships with those who are under-resourced in the world, both locally and globally. On the global side, he has partnered with a severely under-resourced community in Swaziland, Africa since 1996. More locally, his church has a monthly rhythm of service focused on providing support to the under-resourced in East County. In the other sphere, he was a founding partner of Pacific Research and Evaluation, an organizational assessment and program evaluation firm that has served many non-profit entities and government agencies since opening for business in 1998. With offices in Portland, Atlanta, and Washington D.C., the consulting work he helps oversee assists organizations in making the difference they desire with greater efficiency and impact.
His interests in psychology flow out of his professional history as well as his training as a clinical psychologist. As such he enjoys diving into various topics in the field, including psychological and neuropsychological assessment, psychopathology, psychotherapy and psychotherapy outcome research, organizational assessment, program evaluation, and community psychology, as well as studies in the psychology of religion and positive psychology.