Group of happy children playing on meadow, sunset, summertime

Welcome to Project Competence Research on Risk and Resilience!

Project Competence Research on Risk and Resilience (PCR3) is located at the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Our research examines competence, risk, and resilience in development with a focus on the processes leading to positive adaptation in young people whose lives are threatened by adversity. This work aims to build a better science for promoting positive adaptation and preventing problems in human development.

At PCR3, we study adaptation to challenges that arise in the context of poverty, homelessness, war, natural disasters, migration, structural racism, and everyday life. Currently, much of our local research focuses on executive function skills, parenting, emotion, stress, and housing as potentially malleable influences on the adaptive success, health, and well-being of children and their families coping with adversity, particularly the risks associated with homelessness and poverty. Our work is highly collaborative, community-based, multi-level, and multi-disciplinary. We participate in the Homework Starts with Home Research Partnership, a UMN Grand Challenge project that provides evidence to guide state and local initiatives to end student homelessness. Internationally, our team collaborates with Professor Frosso Motti-Stefanidi in the Athena Studies of Resilience Adaptation in Athens. See “Major Projects” for further details.

To get involved, please email us at mastodon@umn.edu or contact Professor Masten directly at amasten@umn.edu.

Advising expectations

Learn more about what to expect as a graduate student in the Masten Lab. Our Lab Director, Ann Masten, Ph.D., outlines what you can expect from her as an advisor/mentor and provides an overview of her expectations of students in the child psychology Ph.D. program at the University of Minnesota.

Read Professor Masten’s advising expectations