Faculty and Students
The CHP team
Craig Johnston, Ph.D.
HHP Department Chair
Professor
Dr. Craig Johnston is an Associate Professor of community health promotion at the University of Houston and is the Department Chair for Health and Human Performance. Dr. Johnston has more than 15 years of experience developing, disseminating, and studying school-based health promotion programs with more than 1,500 children. This programming focused on children who experience health disparities. Specifically, Dr. Johnston has over 50 peer-reviewed publication on the impact of school-based programming on the improvement of health in low-income, minority children.
Tracey Ledoux, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
The ultimate goal of my research is to develop interventions to improve eating behaviors of all Americans. My research focuses on understanding, preventing, and correcting overeating behaviors in the early family unit. I rely on quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods to answer my research questions. Measures I most commonly use to assess variables of interest are reliable and validated self-report, observational, and anthropometric in nature.
Please contact Dr. Ledoux by email or phone, particularly if you….
….are pregnant or the parent of a young child under the age of 5 and may be interested in participating in a research study.
… you may be interested in working with Dr. Ledoux as a doctoral student, please email or call Dr. Ledoux.
… are interested in working with Dr. Ledoux as a paid or volunteer research assistant, please contact her.
… are a researcher who may want to collaborate with Dr. Ledoux, please contact her by email or phone.
Aliye Beyza Cepni, Ph.D.
Research Assistant Professor
My research focuses on promoting healthy eating and physical activity behaviors among children and adolescents, particularly those from underserved communities, to address health disparities. I work across various settings, including schools, summer camps, youth employment programs, and other community-based organizations.
Contact me via email if you are:
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A student seeking an internship in community-based health promotion research
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A community organization looking to partner on initiatives to improve youth health and well-being
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A researcher interested in collaborating on studies aligned with my research interests
Doctoral Students
Morgan Washington
Doctoral Student
Morgan’s primary research aim intends to be about collegiate athletes transitioning out of sport into adult life. She has spent her whole life in sport, 20 years as an elite soccer player, collegiately at two division I institutions and professionally in the United States and abroad. During sport retirement, she had a very difficult time transitioning out of athletics into the working world. She was also a collegiate soccer coach for four seasons, two at Eastern Kentucky University, one year at UMass-Amherst and one at the University of Houston. From these experiences, she realized that she was not alone in her struggles post-retirement from sport. She decided to transition into academia to better the student-athlete experience through research. She has published research on injury in sport but is transitioning into sport administration in her doctoral process. She previously received one grant for a previous project: Ready for Life After Sport Transition? Which used the same recruitment processes as her current proposed project and recruited 500 participants in just eight days. Morgan’s doctoral training experiences along with being an elite collegiate athlete has equipped her to successfully develop this scale and assist athletes in their four-year collegiate career.
Jessica Kirschmann
Doctoral Student
Jessica Kirschmann is a second-year PhD student at the University of Houston. Pursuing a bachelor's degree in Kinesiology. Outside of her research, she enjoys tennis, powerlifting, painting, game nights, and hiking. Fun fact: her dog’s names are Fish and S’mores and just think more people need to know that. Looking ahead, she plans to open her own educational weight lifting gym that is dog friendly or work as a researcher for the MLB! She is primarily focused on spearheading the Special Olympics project and playing a major role in the development of the College Student Resource Survey. Additionally, she is taking on responsibilities for the RISE Lab’s Offset Loading project and ROTC intervention and aspires to create an intervention program for soon-to-retire student athletes.
Undergraduate Students
Rahul Jose
Undergraduate Student
Rahul Jose is a third-year undergraduate student studying college students’ well-being. His research is geared toward analyzing the complex factors that influence college students’ mental and physical health. He is keen on understanding the availability and effectiveness of campus-wide and environmental resources on students’ emotional and physical development and their consequences after college. His research extends to how campus resources and environmental factors mold student-athletes to prepare for life outside of college sports. His passions outside of research include running, going to the gym, and spending time with family.