Dr. Catherine (Cathy) Crosby-Currie

Associate Professor

I started on the path that led me to St. Lawrence at another small liberal arts college, Hamilton College.  At Hamilton, I developed my love of learning as well as my interests in two fields—psychology and law—which I bring together in my teaching and research.  I continued my education at the University of Maryland School of Law in the fall of 1984.  While my law school colleagues were studying for the bar during the summer of 1987, I was preparing to move to Charlottesville, Virginia, to begin graduate studies in psychology.  I earned my doctoral degree in Community Psychology from the University of Virginia in 1994, then taught at two of my alma maters—UVa and Hamilton—in visiting positions for the next three years.  I joined the faculty of St. Lawrence in the fall of 1996.  My primary teaching responsibilities in the Psychology Department are the Community Psychology Seminar, for which students complete an 8-hour per week internship, and Psychology and Law, an introduction to my sub-specialty in the field.  My primary areas of scholarship are issues related to families and the law and the prevention of high-risk alcohol use by college students.

In addition to my responsibilities within the Psychology Department, I have been teaching within the First-Year Program at St. Lawrence since the fall of 1998.  All first-year students participate in the FYP, which involves a team-taught, interdisciplinary course and is the context for the development of first-year students’ college-level communication skills and academic advising; also, all of the students in a particular FYP live together in the residence hall.  The program continues in the spring with a research seminar, taught by a single professor about a specific topic and enrolling students from several different FYPs.  In the FYP, I have taught about families, marriage, law and science, libraries and constitutional law.  The FYP is one of the reasons I chose SLU as my academic home, and although it required that I be away from my wonderful departmental colleagues, I was honored to have the opportunity to lead the program as the Associate Dean of the First Year from 2007-2011.  After a year-long leave, I returned to the Psychology Department full-time in the fall of 2012.

You are likely to find me back in my various gardens in the summer, because I am an avid gardener.  I also love to sing, and since my very first semester, I have been singing with the University Chorus, one of our music ensembles comprised of St. Lawrence students, staff and faculty and community members from Canton and the surrounding area.  When not working, you are also likely to find me playing card and board games with my husband, Grant Currie, who works in our Educational Technologies Department, and our son, Quin.