Michael Sladek

In the Contexts of Health, Adolescent Resilience, and Measuring Stress (CHARMS) Lab, we strive to support a warm and inclusive space in which a diverse community of scholars pursue research with adolescents and young adults using strengths-based and identity-affirming approaches to advance health equity and social justice in developmental science. Informed by cultural-ecological models of development, we use a variety of methods to better understand youth’s experiences and identities in everyday social and cultural contexts, acknowledging that social marginalization affects diverse youth in profoundly different ways based on inequitable systems in society. We use these methodological tools to grapple with the complexity of trying to understand how the combination of youth’s contextual experiences (like how people treat them and who they interact with) and identities (what they know and how they feel about themselves) uniquely shape their health, well-being, and adjustment in school.

Current collaborative projects use both quantitative and qualitative longitudinal methods, including a study of LGBTQ+ young adults’ identity development, resilience, and health; a daily diary study of adolescents’ ethnic-racial identity and everyday experiences during a school-based program supporting exploration of ethnicity, race, and identity; and a community-based participatory research study of teachers’ professional development and implementation of this ethnic-racial identity program with their students. This research is funded by Junior Faculty Fellowships from the Vice President for Research and Partnerships and the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences of The University of Oklahoma, the National Science Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, and the Institute of Education Sciences (U.S. Department of Education).

I am pleased to serve as a consulting editor for Child Development, the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Journal of Research on Adolescence, and Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology. I am a member of the Society for Research on Adolescence, the Society for Research in Child Development, and the American Psychological Association. I received my B.A. with honors in psychology from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, received my M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology from Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ. Prior to joining OU, I completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, MA.

Student collaborators are underlined.

Sladek, M. R., Martinez-Fuentes, S., Wantchekon, K. A., Aguilar, G., & Umaña-Taylor, A. J. (2025). Ethnic-racial discrimination, identity, and out-group contact: A systematic review of daily process studies. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/cdp0000735

Sladek, M. R., Umaña-Taylor, A. J., Neville, H. A., Ison, A., Martinez-Fuentes, S., Mason, P., Park, Y., Safa, M. D., Satterthwaite-Freiman, M., Soto-Shed, E., & Wantchekon, K. A. (2024). Professional development for providing time and opportunities for change in U.S. teachers’ ethnic-racial identity. Identity. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/15283488.2024.2366892

Sladek, M. R., Gusman, M., & Doane, L. D. (2023). Ethnic-Racial identity developmental trajectories across the transition to college. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 52, 61-75. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-022-01724-z

Sladek, M. R., Umaña-Taylor, A. J., Hardesty, J. L., Aguilar, G., Bates, D., Bayless, S. D., Gomez, E., Hur, C. K., Ison, A., Jones, S., Luo, H., Satterthwaite-Freiman, M., & Vázquez, M. A. (2022). “So, like, it’s all a mix of one”: Intersecting contexts of adolescents’ ethnic-racial socialization. Child Development, 93(5), 1284-1303. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13756

Sladek, M. R., Castro, S. C., & Doane, L. D. (2021). Ethnic-Racial discrimination experiences predict Latinx adolescents’ physiological stress processes across college transition. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 128, 105212. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2021.105212

Sladek, M. R., Umaña-Taylor, A. J., Wantchekon, K. A., McDermott, E. R., & Updegraff, K. A. (2021). Contextual moderators of a school-based ethnic-racial identity intervention: The roles of family ethnic socialization and ethnic-racial background. Prevention Science, 22(3), 378-385. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-020-01166-8

Sladek, M. R., Doane, L. D., Luecken, L. J., Gonzales, N. A., & Grimm, K. J. (2020). Reducing cultural mismatch: Latino students’ neuroendocrine and affective stress responses following cultural diversity and inclusion reminder. Hormones and Behavior, 120, 104681. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2020.104681

Sladek, M. R., Umaña-Taylor, A. J., McDermott, E. R., Rivas-Drake, D., & Martinez-Fuentes, S. (2020). Testing invariance of ethnic-racial discrimination and identity measures for adolescents across ethnic-racial groups and contexts. Psychological Assessment, 32(6), 509-526. https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0000805