College of Education and Human Development

Department of Educational Psychology

Mollie Weeks

  • Pronouns: she, her, hers

  • Lecturer

  • Office Hours

    By appointment

Mollie Weeks

Areas of interest

  • Educational disproportionalities
  • Secondary data analysis
  • Equity-centered legislation
Degrees

BA, Psychology, St. Olaf College - Northfield, MN
MA, Educational Psychology, University of Minnesota
PhD, School Psychology, University of Minnesota

Biography

Ever since I was a child, I have had a deep love for education and I am extremely grateful to share that passion as a career. I hold a PhD in school psychology from the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. In my current position, I serve as a lecturer within the school psychology program, specialist coordinator, and supervise school psychological service provision/fieldwork at South St. Paul Secondary School.

My central goal as an instructor is to prepare future generations of school psychologists with the knowledge and skills to enact meaningful change within their professional environments centered on ethical and equity-centered practice. In my teaching, research, and supervision, I leverage high-quality teaching practices to produce practitioners and scholars with (1) the knowledge and skills to engage in critical thinking; (2) a passion for promoting individual- and systems-level initiatives for enhancing educational equity; (3) the ability to demonstrate ethical problem-solving in real world situations; and (4) an understanding of the way in which history has shaped, and is shaped by, public education.

The central tenants of my current and future research agendas are to identify, evaluate, and promote evidence-based educational practices and policies to (a) ameliorate educational disparities across general and special education for traditionally marginalized student populations and (b) analyze subsequent legislative and policy changes that address educational equity. As such, I have engaged in extensive equity-related research along three strands of inquiry: (1) the relationship between multi-tiered systems of support and disproportionality within special education identification and exclusionary discipline; (2) student and school mental health; and (3) strategies for leveraging federal legislation to establish nondiscriminatory school practices.

Publications

Sullivan, A. L., Harris, B., Miller, F. G., Fallon, L. M., Weeks, M. R., Malone, C. M., Kulkarni, T., Proctor, S. L., Johnson, A. H., & Rossen, E. (under review). A call to action for school psychology to address COVID-19 health disparities.

Thayer, A. J., Weeks, M., Cook, C. (2020). Dual factor mental health model: Validation through mixture modeling and cut scores. Psychology in the Schools, doi:10.1002/pits.22447

Sullivan, A. L., Weeks, M., Kulkarni, T., Nguyen, T., Kendrick-Dunn, T. B., & Barrett, C. (2020). Historical foundations of health disparities: A primer for school psychologists to advance social justice. NASP Communiqué, 49(2), 1-30.

Weeks, M., Kulkarni, T., Sullivan, A. L., & Kim, J. (2020). Large-scale secondary data analysis—Part 3: Sense and skepticism when engaging with popular (social) media. NASP Communiqué, 48(7), 28-30.

Weeks, M. R., & Sullivan, A. L. (2019). Discrimination matters: Relations of perceived discrimination to student mental health. School Mental Health, 11, 425-437. doi: 10.1007/s12310-019-09301-1

Presentations

Weeks, M. R., Sullivan, A. L., & Kulkarni, T. (2020, February). MTSS is not enough: Preventing disproportionality through nondiscriminatory tiered services. Symposium accepted for presentation at the National Association of School Psychologists Annual Convention, Baltimore, MD.

Sullivan, A. L., Weeks, M. R., & Kulkarni, T. (2020, February). D-mned lies and statistics: Critical consumerism of large-scale research. Symposium accepted for presentation at the National Association of School Psychologists Annual Convention, Baltimore, MD.

Nguyen, T., Weeks, M. R., Dong, Q., Sullivan, A. L., & Pham, A. (2020, February). Narrowing opportunity gaps: Enfranchising socially marginalized students. Poster accepted for presentation at the National Association of School Psychologists Annual Convention, Baltimore, MD.

Sullivan, A. L., Weeks, M. R., & Kulkarni, T. (2020, February). D-mned lies and statistics: Critical consumerism of large-scale research. Symposium accepted for presentation at the National Association of School Psychologists Annual Convention, Baltimore, MD.

Knewitz, D., Weeks, M., & Weber, N. (2020, January). Equity & eligibility: The perpetuation of disparities by special education policy. Presented at the 2020 Minnesota School Psychologists Association Midwinter Conference, Plymouth, MN.

Weeks, M. R. (2019, August). The effectiveness of SWPBS at reducing exclusionary discipline in U.S. schools: A systematic review. Poster presented at the American Psychological Association Annual Convention, Chicago, IL.

Weeks, M. R. (2019, February). Discrimination matters: Relations of perceived discrimination to student mental health. Poster presented at the National Association of School Psychologists Annual Convention, Atlanta, GA.

Sullivan, A. L., & Weeks, M. R. (2018, February). Differentiated instruction for young English Learners. Poster presented at the National Association of School Psychologists Annual Convention, Chicago, IL.