Benita Jackson graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1994. She completed a major in cognitive science and a minor in women’s studies. That fall, she started graduate school at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Broadly, her research and teaching focused on the intersections of gender, emotion, and health. In 1997 she received a Master’s Degree in psychology, concentrating in personality psychology. In 2000, she became the first-ever graduate of the joint doctoral program in psychology and women’s studies at the University of Michigan, itself the first-ever such program in existence.
During her time in graduate school, Benita assisted in teaching the popular Women and Health course cross-listed in nursing and women’s studies. She also designed and taught her own course entitled Critical Perspectives on Gender, Substance Use and Mental Health, offered through the English department as a first-year writing-intensive seminar.
From 2000-2001, Benita worked at the University of Missouri, Columbia as project director of a community-based, multi-year research study that examined personality and social factors for health-related risk-taking behaviors among adolescents and young adults.
From 2001-2004, she completed interdisciplinary post-doctoral training on the social epidemiology of lung disease at Harvard Medical School/Channing Laboratory/Brigham and Women’s Hospital. To learn public health methods formally, in 2003 she completed a master’s in public health at Harvard School of Public Health emphasizing quantitative methods.
She joined the psychology faculty at Smith College in 2004 to share her love of research on topics related to health psychology in social context. Benita also serves on the steering committee and is a campus advisor for the Five College Certificate Program in Culture, Health and Science.
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