MCLA Blog

Dr. Peggy Brooks, Psychology Department

Students collect EEG data.

Professor Brooks with the sleep lab laundry … Yeah, the students sleep, but the professor washes the sheets.

“My research group is conducting studies of students who habitually take naps and how napping may be related to improved performance on tests of declarative and procedural memory. We’ve just finished collecting data this semester; preliminary analysis is that nappers do indeed show greater improvement than non-nappers on reaction time and memory for word pairs. We have submitted our results for presentation at Eastern Psychological Association in March. “

Peggy Brooks came to MCLA in the Fall of 1990. She has a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from University of Florida. Prior to MCLA, Peggy taught at Mount Holyoke College, Emory University, and Kennesaw State University. In addition to teaching, she was the clinical director of a community mental health center in Atlanta, Georgia, where she also had a private practice.

At MCLA, Professor Brooks has taught Introduction to Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, Counseling Methods in Psychology, Health Psychology, Psychology of Gender, Psychology of Women, Sleep and Dreams, and supervised the Internship in Psychology course. She also teaches Introduction to Women’s Studies as part of the Women’s Studies minor.

Her research interests are sleep, depression and coping with stress. She has supervised student research that has been presented at national and regional conferences, and subsequently published in peer-reviewed professional journals. Dr. Brooks founded the MCLA chapter of Psi Chi, the National Honor Society in Psychology, in 2002. She also co founded the Susan B. Anthony Women’s Center in 1993. She has been Advisor to the Psychology Society and served on numerous campus and community committees. In addition, Dr. Brooks has published in Psychological Bulletin, Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, Developmental Psychobiology, and Voices: The Journal of the American Academy of Psychotherapists.