Title: Associate Professor/ Director of the Prosocial Leader Lab
Institution: University of Colorado – Denver
Address: 1380 Lawrence Street Center, R, University of Colorado Denver SEHD Office # 641, Denver, Colorado 80204
Email: julia.mahfouz@ucdenver.edu
Phone: (814) 441-6656
Visit Julia’s Research Website
Research Interests: wellbeing; mindfulness; social and emotional learning; implementation science; school improvement; intervention evaluation; professional development; qualitative research; interviews; focus groups; emotions; emotional labor; culture responsiveness; adolescents; geriatrics; adults; social and emotional competence; emotional intelligence; nature; play; wonder; awe; leadership development; leadership; principalship; health; stress; emotional exhaustion; psychological capital; professional capital; creativity
Biographical Sketch:
Development of the social and emotional competencies of both adults and young people through professional development, preparation programs, and interventions, is at the core of my work. I’ve implemented mindfulness-based and social emotional learning (SEL)-based professional development to understand how such programs can improve wellbeing of principals, teachers, and students. I also investigate how preparation programs and certification standards can be strengthened to enhance effective leadership by supporting principals to deepen their social and emotional competencies. I conduct basic research to better understand these relationships and evaluative, efficacy, effectiveness, and dissemination research to determine whether how such programs are effective and sustainable in educational settings. These understandings seek to deepen the understanding of SEL and thus, help create spaces equitable for all where all could flourish, thus, utilizing policy as a lever for change and as a powerful context that shapes education at multiple levels of the system.
I have continued a line of research began in my dissertation (Mahfouz, 2017) that focuses on exploring how (SEL)-based professional development programs influence the school leaders’ wellbeing and leadership. Since then, I have continued to examine and review basic and applied research and develop theory in this area. As one example of this work, I implemented CARE (Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education), a mindfulness-based professional development, to explore its influence on school leaders’ wellbeing. In collaboration with other scholars, we are currently assessing the degree to which aspects of SEL are reflected in the state certification requirements and training through program course requirements for principals. If SEL is to be embedded into the very foundation of education and implemented into K-12 educational settings, it must be included in state-level school leader certification requirements and preparation programs so that prospective principals and superintendents are adequately prepared to integrate SEL into their schools. I am currently investigating the effects of Soul of Leadership, an SEL-based program developed by the Center of Courage and Renewal on the school administrators’ wellbeing and leadership.
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vXO8cUkAAAAJ&hl=en
Education:
Positions
2017 – 2020 Assistant Professor, University of Idaho
2020 – 2023 Assistant Professor, University of Colorado Denver
2022 – present Director of the Prosocial Leader Lab, University of Colorado Denver
2023 – present Associate Professor, University of Colorado Denver
Honors & Awards
Joseph E. Zins Award For Outstanding Contributions to Action Research in Social and Emotional Learning (2023)
CASEL Roger Weissberg Scholar (2022, 2023)
Donald J. Willower Award of Excellence in educational Administration, The Consortium for the Study of
Leadership and Ethics in Education (2019)
Dissertation of the Year Finalist of Leadership for School Improvement SIG, AERA (2018)
Donald J. Willower Dissertation Award in Educational Leadership (2017)
David L. Scholar, AERA (2016)
Barbara Jackson Scholar, UCEA (2015 -2017)
Professional Certifications:
Mindfulness-based stress reduction
Cultivating awareness and resilience in education
Learning to BREATHE