Dr. Kunz's Unofficial bio

This unofficial bio is an informal, messier version of Dr. Kunz's professional bio; it describes more details about the meandering path she took in order to professionally get where she is today.

Dr. Kunz grew up in a town you haven't heard of in Long Island, NY. She began playing women's lacrosse as a sophomore in high school after not making the women's soccer team for the second year in a row. When it came time to look at colleges, Dr. Kunz was certain of two things: she wanted to major in psychology and she wanted to play lacrosse. Dr. Kunz only applied to schools with D-1 women's lacrosse programs because, as she said with the confidence and wisdom of a 17-year old "you can major in psychology anywhere." After being recruited by several D-1 lacrosse programs, "anywhere" turned out to be Quinnipiac University, where she majored in Psychology (and Sociology) and played NCAA D-1 women's lacrosse all 4 years (serving as Co-Captain of the team in her senior year).

After graduating, her pursuit of education took Dr. Kunz to Flagstaff, AZ, where she attended Northern Arizona University. After spending two years adjusting to the altitude and enjoying the beautiful western US, she earned a master's degree in Applied Health Psychology. From there, she moved to Knoxville, TN to attend the University of Tennessee (the real UT) for her Ph.D. Being a first generation college student, Dr. Kunz didn't really know how to navigate a Ph.D. program at first, but with time and support from her mentor, she eventually got the hang of it. After being rejected from the NSF graduate research fellowship for the third year in a row, she managed to get enough research done--some of which was published--to win her program's research award. Six years and two raccoons ransacking the lab later, she earned her PhD. in Experimental (Social) Psychology and a minor in statistics. She was hired at UD as an assistant professor and began working there in the fall of 2011. In 2017 she was promoted to associate professor with tenure.

CV of rejections--Coming Soon!