SEP Training Library

Dr. Mary Murphy is Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Associate Vice Provost for Student Diversity and Inclusion at Indiana University. Her research focuses on understanding how people’s social identities and group memberships, such as their gender, race, and socio-economic status, interact with the contexts they encounter to affect people’s thoughts, feelings, motivation, and performance. In the realm of education, her research illuminates the situational cues that influence students’ academic motivation and achievement with an emphasis on understanding when those processes are similar and different for majority and minority students. She develops, implements, and evaluates social psychological interventions that reduce identity threat for students and examines their effects on students’ motivation, persistence, and performance. Mary is a co-founder of the College Transition Collaborative, a research-practice partnership aimed to increase student success through social psychological interventions. In the realm of organizations and tech, her research examines barriers and solutions for increasing gender and racial diversity in STEM fields. In particular, she examines the role of organizational mindset in companies’ organizational culture and employee engagement and performance. Mary earned a B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and a PhD from Stanford University. She completed a NSF postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University. In 2012, she joined the faculty of Indiana University and, in 2013, was named a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science (APS). She is the recipient of over $8 million in federal and foundation grants including a recent $2.2 million NSF CAREER award for her research on strategies to improve diversity in STEM. Her research has been profiled in The New York Times, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Scientific American, and NPR, among other outlets.