Sheila Brownlow, Ph.D.

• B.A., University of Massachusetts - Boston
• Ph.D., Brandeis University

Dr. Sheila Brownlow, Professor, received her B.A. from the University of Massachusetts-Boston and her Ph.D. from Brandeis University. She joined the Catawba College faculty in 1990 in order to work with students in a personal environment where professors and students know each other and interact daily. She still enjoys teaching psychology — particularly social, experimental methods, personality—but also enjoys teaching multi-disciplinary courses (e.g., Home from Nowhere, Consilience, and What Else but Home?). In 2002, she was named winner of the Swink Award for Outstanding Classroom Teaching, and from 2006-2008 she was the Jefferson Pilot endowed professor.  She won the Tri-Delt Service Award in 2015, the Trustee Award for Outstanding Service to the College in 2016, and was named one of the "10 must-take professors in the Charlotte, NC, area" in 2015.  Dr. Brownlow is also the Director of the First Year Experience.

A social psychologist, Dr. Brownlow maintains an active program of research, focusing on implicit biases, mediators in sex differences in spatial skills, and implicit egotism.  Her research with students is an extension of the classroom, and she has over 30 scholarly publications in peer-reviewed journals with students as co-authors. She also guides students in presenting their work at professional conferences; she and her students have presented over 80 research studies at the annual meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association. 

Outside of the classroom and lab, she enjoys travel, reading, and working on various historic restoration projects in Salisbury.