Professor Strand joined the Department of Psychology as a visiting assistant professor in 2011 and as an assistant professor in 2013. She received her PhD in psychology in 2010 from Washington University in St. Louis after receiving her MA from the same institution in 2008 and her BA in psychology and English from Tufts University.
Strand offers a range of courses from Principles of Psychology to the Capstone Seminar preparing senior psychology majors for comps. As a cognitive and sensory/perceptual psychologist by training, Strand has taught courses including Sensation & Perception with a lab, Psychology of Spoken Words, and Perceptual & Cognitive Expertise. Strand has also joined Jason Decker (philosophy and cognitive science) and Marty Baylor (physics) to offer an interdisciplinary team-taught course on color.
Strand’s research focuses on how humans perceive speech, the cognitive demands of doing so, and the cues available to listeners that facilitate speech processing in a noisy world. Her work also aims to increase representation in speech research and experimental psychology by demonstrating the value in collecting data from diverse participant pools rather than the homogeneous samples that have traditionally been used in speech research.
Strand serves as chair of and comps coordinator for the Department of Psychology, and has previously served on the Education Curriculum Committee, the IRB Committee, and College Council, among others.