SOE News
Samuel Song comes to us from the Yale Child Study Center where he served on a district-wide school violence task force and assessed school bullying from an ecological framework. As an assistant professor of school psychology at the School of Education, he will focus on promoting mental health in schools and communities.
“My broad mission is to promote the healthy development of all children,” Song said. “In my research, I study how to design school environments to promote competence—academic, social and emotional—and prevent negative outcomes among school children. My specific focus is on bullying and what schools can do to prevent it.”
Growing up in an immigrant family in Southern California, Song attended a high school where violence and gangs were prevalent. This first-hand experience, coupled with learning in college about academic resilience and the extent to which education can impact children, led to his current interests.
In North Carolina, Song wants to develop relationships with the K-12 schools and work collaboratively with them. “School-based research has to be flexible and meet the needs of the school,” he said. “Teachers and administrators have much expertise including critical knowledge about what works in their school. Everyone has a lot to learn from one another.”
Song has an interest in educational policies related to bullying and notes that 16 states in the country now have an anti-bullying policy that requires or recommends all schools to address bullying. “That is the type of work I’m interested in doing in North Carolina,” Song said. “I want to be as helpful as I can to the state.”
Song has served as an English as a Second Language instructor in Korea, his native country. He has won several national awards, including a Spencer Pre-Dissertation Fellowship, and has presented widely at professional conferences as well as in schools and civic organizations.
Song’s doctoral studies were conducted in school psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. At Yale, he completed a two-year psychology fellowship in child clinical and adolescent psychology with a specialization in children exposed to violence. He holds an undergraduate degree from Emory University in Atlanta and two master’s degrees ─ an M.Ed. in school psychology from Georgia State University in Atlanta and an M.A. in psychology and education from Columbia University in New York.