Erica Jayne Friedman, PhD, has joined the professional staff at Farmingdale State College as Assistant Project Director in the “First in the World” Research-Aligned Mentorship program.
Dr. Friedman will be working with Farmingdale faculty to connect students to research and project-based opportunities both on and off campus. She will also be teaching sophomore experience and transfer-year experience courses; implementing special events and activities for students; and developing the Research-Aligned Mentorship program website and promotional materials.
Before joining Farmingdale, Dr. Friedman held various positions in the provost’s office and psychology department at Hunter College, where she was also an adjunct lecturer. In 2015 she worked at the Citizen’s Advice Bureau in Napier, New Zealand.
She earned her PhD and MA in social and personality psychology with certification in lesbian, gay, and queer studies from the Graduate Center at the City University of New York (CUNY), and holds a BA in psychology with distinguished independent work from Binghamton University (SUNY).
Farmingdale’s “First in the World” program is funded by a $2.9 million grant from the US Department of Education. It has a goal of improving four-year graduation rates by 20% over Farmingdale’s baseline for first-year and transfer students. The program will support on-campus research and place faculty and students in mentored research experiences off campus in national laboratories, research universities, business accelerators, and other research venues.