Psychology is a popular major among St. Lawrence students, which is why we are excited to introduce you to Dr. Laura Mills-Smith, an Assistant Professor of Psychology. She has taught at SLU for two semesters so far. She taught Introduction to Psychology during her first semester, and is now teaching Developmental Psychology. As most of her students can agree, she always starts off her lectures with a bright smile and a warm welcome. During most, if not all of her lectures, she proudly talks about her son when explaining material. SLU Her Campus sat down with her to learn more about her and her experiences as a researcher and as a professor.
(Pic: Tara Freeman, St. Lawrence University website)
Q: When were you introduced to the field of Psychology, and what sparked your interest in the field overall?
A: My father is a clinical psychologist, so psychology has always been a part of my life. I thought I was interested in linguistic anthropology because I knew I wanted to study the way that people interact with language. But, when I was looking at graduate programs, I saw nothing really suiting my interests and none of the programs were exploring language the same way that I wanted to. My dad suggested that I look into some psychology programs; I ended up finding some developmental psychologists who were approaching language the way that I wanted to, and started doing psychology research from there.
Q: You’ve mentioned that you have conducted your own experiments. What is your favorite part about conducting them? Which experiment did you enjoy conducting the most, and why?
A: I get really excited when it comes to doing research involving babies. As an undergraduate, I started doing experiments by examining how infants learn language and how the people around them help them do so. For ten years, I’ve been looking at what people do to help babies learn words and learn to communicate. When language learning is very difficult, infants rely on the social cues that other people give them, like eye gaze for example. It helps that someone looks at what they’re talking about so that if the infant looks at it with them, the infant has a better chance of learning that object’s label. In my experiment, I used an eye tracker and some neat technology. The eye tracker is what made my experiment unique because I could show the infants’ parents the data that their children had given me. It wasn’t like I was just explaining to them what the study was about or what kind of data the study was trying to collect. I could say, ‘The data is right here. This is exactly what your baby did. Here is the exact video that they watched, how they watched it, and how that relates to the population sample as a whole.” Being able to be interactive with an infant is really rewarding as well as being able to say to their parents, “Here’s how your child’s participation was valuable and here is how they contributed to infant science.”
Q: What inspired you to start teaching?
A: Well, I come from a long line of teachers: three of my four grandparents and my parents were all teachers. So, I think in many ways, I grew up in an environment where explaining and modeling things to others was just part of how we interacted as a family. My orientation toward understanding children came from being the oldest child in my family; especially with a ten year age difference between me and my younger sister. My first teaching experience was in high school when I taught martial arts classes to young children. I found that being able to give children tangible feedback enabled me to understand that learners have different styles and that some kinds of instruction are not helpful for different people. Understanding how to reach students was my first introduction to teaching.
Q: How has being a professor influenced/inspired your career as a psychologist?
A: In graduate school, I was a teacher’s assistant and I truly enjoyed it. It was a break from classes where I got to be with younger people with curious minds and tell them about the things that made me really excited about psychology. Teaching puts demands on you that are different than the type of demands that designing and executing experiments put on you. I like conducting research, get excited to try and solve problems and answer questions; but, I also like seeing the looks on students faces when they make connections between material. In graduate school, I found research and teaching to be a rewarding experience, but knew that teaching at a research institute was not going to give me the balance (between teaching, researching, and a personal life) that I wanted. Teaching in a liberal arts environment was right for me.
Q: You proudly display photos of loved ones on your desk; you even have a small cube filled with adorable photos of your son. How has he inspired you as a psychologist and professor?
A: One of the things I think about is: “How did I ever think I could handle having a baby and knowing what being a mother was like before actually becoming a mother?” My son has made me think about the parents’ perspective when they bring their child into a laboratory setting. He makes me think about concepts that aren’t being addressed in literature or being taught in classrooms, such as a young child’s sense of humor. My son is always telling jokes that make him laugh, even if they don’t make sense to an adult. In those moments, I ask myself, “Where does he get this sense of humor from?” In addition, my son had a medical issue that delayed his language, so I also got to see what slightly-atypical language development looks like. He wasn’t too deviant from normal language parameters, but his experience helped me think more in depth about language development. At the end of the day, my son keeps me young, but at the same time, he makes me feel more mature in all areas of my life.