LARAINE M. GLIDDEN, Ph.D.

Laraine M. Glidden, Ph.D. is professor of psychology and the associate provost for faculty affairs at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, the liberal arts state-designated honors college of Maryland. She has been affiliated with St. Mary’s since 1976, after having taught at the University of Illinois, Clarkson University, and Columbia University. During her 30+ year career, Dr. Glidden has conducted research in a number of specialty areas involving mental retardation and developmental disabilities, with the support of grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute of Mental Health and other agencies and organizations. Her current work on family adjustment to rearing children with disabilities has been ongoing since 1982. In this work she has used a unique design by comparing families who knowingly adopt children with disabilities to those who are rearing similar children by birth. Using this methodology, she has helped to refocus prevailing views and hypotheses regarding parental experiences from almost exclusive pathology to a balance reflecting both positive and negative outcomes of adaptation.

Dr. Glidden has served in a number of national leadership roles within the field of mental retardation. Currently, she serves as president-elect designate of Division 33 — Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities — of the American Psychological Association; the past-president of the Academy on Mental Retardation; and editor of the annual monograph series — International Review of Research in Mental Retardation---published by Academic Press. She has consulted extensively for a number of organizations, including NIH, and regularly reviews grant proposals for this agency and others. Dr. Glidden has authored or edited five books and more than 100 chapters, articles, book reviews and conference abstracts, most of which are relevant to disability issues.