Principal Investigators
Dr. Cory Bolkan
Dr. Cory Bolkan is a Professor in the Department of Human Development at Washington State University in Vancouver and is co-director of WSU’s GATHER Lab (Generating Aging & Translational Health Equity Research). Dr. Bolkan’s research is focused broadly on healthy aging, the implementation and evaluation of evidence-based health and social service programs for older adults, and the exploration of how family/social relationships are risk or protective factors for well-being in later life, especially in regards to elder abuse. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses related to adult development, gerontology, death and dying, and research methods, and is a faculty member in WSU’s interdisciplinary Prevention Science doctoral program.
Dr. Raven Weaver
Dr. Raven H. Weaver is an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Development at Washington State University in Pullman, WA. And is co-director of WSU’s GATHER Lab (Generating Aging & Translational Health Equity Research). Dr. Weaver’s research centers around vulnerable and near-risk populations (e.g., low-income, rural-dwelling, insufficient care) and the adequacy of formal and informal long-term services and supports designed to promote health behaviors and deter adverse health outcomes in late life. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses related to adult development, gerontology, death and dying, and families in poverty and is a faculty member in WSU’s interdisciplinary Prevention Science doctoral program.
Graduate Students
Kelly O’Sullivan, M.S.
Kelly is a third-year Doctoral student in Prevention Science at WSU in Pullman. Kelly graduated with a B.S. in Gerontology from Barton College in Wilson, North Carolina (2022) and recently earned her M.S. in the WSU Prevention Science program (2024). Her research interests include dementia and cognitive changes in older adults, family caregiving, recreation, minority aging, and resource access for older adults. Kelly is passionate about fostering opportunities to discuss and research topics and issues surrounding older adults and creating inclusive and supportive spaces in higher education.
Tosha Big Eagle, B.S.
Tosha Big Eagle is a justice-impacted Indigenous, Ph.D. graduate student in the Prevention Science program at Washington State University Vancouver (WSUV). She is a mother, wife, auntie, friend, and caregiver. Her research interests include health equity, harm reduction, mass incarceration, gender development, aging, death education, and Indigenous Ways of Knowing. Big Eagle serves as the current lead graduate student researcher for a project focused on investigating health equity and the availability of healthcare for aging and older women with dementia and other non-normative disorders who reside in correctional facilities. She has the honor of collaborating with the Hope Team, a grassroots health initiative at the Washington Correction Center for Women to create an intergenerational elder care program for the aging women inside.
Ashley Murray, B.A.
Ashley Murray is a second-year doctoral student in Prevention Science. She has a B.A. in Psychology from California State University, East Bay. Her research interests include aging, cognitive changes across the lifespan, the development of cognitive dysfunction, and cortical networks involved in carrying out cognitive processes. The eventual goal of her research is to contribute to the development of effective strategies that improve health span and promote well-being across the lifespan. Her experience as a research assistant in the Lab for the Developing Mind and the Gartstein Temperament Lab allow her to develop a unique lifespan perspective on cognition and healthy development. Ashley has four cats she’d love to tell you about (and show pictures). In her free time, you’ll find her going for long bike rides, gardening, (trying to) play guitar, reading, or going to the movies.
Medical Students
Angelique King, B.S.
Angelique King is a medical student at WSU’s Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine in the Class of 2025. She first connected with the GATHER lab for scholarly work on death education for WSU Spokane’s healthcare programs. For future goals, Angelique is undecided on her specialty but is interested in chronic diseases and serving the geriatric population. Her interest in death, dying, and death education comes from a desire to understand and improve the end-of-life and grieving experience. As she goes on to choose a specialty, she looks forward to taking her experiences from here to practice in serving both patients and families.
Logan Patterson, B.S.
Logan is a medical student at the WSU’s Elson S Floyd College of Medicine with a B.S. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (2016). He is currently in his third year of school and is participating in clerkships in the greater Spokane area. Logan’s medical specialty interests include oncology, palliative care, geriatrics, and internal medicine. As part of his education, he is researching how death and dying are approached in medical school curricula. He hopes to take many of the lessons from this research regarding the end-of-life and grief into his future clinical practice
Quynh Phung, B.S.
Quynh is a second-year medical student at Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine, WSU-Spokane. She is interested in becoming an Emergency Medicine physician one day, a field that sees the second-highest number of patient deaths of all medical specialties. Her interest in death and dying grew after watching bewildered family members make guesses about the treatment preferences of their loved ones and experiencing her first death as a medical student in the Emergency Department. She has been working with other medical students to enhance end-of-Life care training at ESFCOM, hoping that students will be better equipped with palliative care knowledge and navigate the emotional challenges of coping with patient death.[
Anna Roman, B.S.
Anna Roman is a third-year medical student at WSU’s Elson S Floyd College of Medicine, with a B.S. in Materials Science Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. She is undecided in her specialty, but her research interests include death education for health science students, human development, folk medicine, and cultural beliefs around death, dying, and end-of-life care.
Undergraduate Students
Maddy Kidner
Maddy is a junior at WSU-V, majoring in Psychology and Human Development. Her future research interests include adult neurodivergence within brain function and cognition. She primarily focuses on making a more equitable and inclusive environment and experience for neurodivergent individuals. Her goal is to work more closely with diagnostic criteria to find ways to support underrepresented groups of people and to provide them with additional support. However, currently, she is exploring the aging population. She is eager to understand death and dying better and how to better the end-of-life experience for the community, patients, and families processing grief. With this experience, she hopes to gain more research knowledge and learn how to apply research to underrepresented populations within the community.
Lab Alumni
Autumn Decker, Ph.D.
Autumn graduated with her Ph.D. from the Prevention Science program at WSU and is now continuing to champion lifespan research in various teaching and research capacities. Autumn also holds a B.S. in Exercise Science and Psychology from Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan (2018), and an M.S. in Kinesiology from University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee (2020). Autumn also holds two graduate certificates, one in Applied Gerontology from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and one in Applied Measurement and Quantitative Methods from Washington State University. Autumn’s research interests include inequities in death, dying, and the end-of-life experience. She is also interested in death education, older adults living in rural areas, service use, health literacy, grief and coping, and intersections of public policy and health outcomes in older adults.
Emily Ericson
Emily graduated with a degree focusing on Psychology and Human Development. She is passionate about helping others and using her education to bring joy to people’s lives. She hopes to further her education with a master’s degree in social work. Her interest in gerontology grew by taking Dr. Weaver’s Death and Dying class in which she learned how much help those who are dying and the people around them need and the underwhelming amount of help that they do receive.
Ashley Robillard
Ashley graduated from WSUV with a major in Biology and a minor in Anthropology. She won the 2023 Crimson Award in the WSU Showcase for Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities (SURCA) for her research with Washington State agencies on Rapid DNA Analysis and forensic evidence knowledge for evidence processing and collection. She has a passion for forensics and focuses on applying her biology academia to a career in funeral services and mortuary science. She plans to become licensed for afterlife procedures and funeral service sciences by taking the national exam from the American Board of Funeral Service Education. Besides her biology studies, she is interested in forensic anthropology, crime scene investigation, death doulas, and destigmatizing conversations about death and dying.
Kaeli Stephens
Kaeli Stephens graduated with a degree in Cultural Anthropology and a focus on death and dying. She contributed to research at WSU-Vancouver that is focused on the presence of death education in the U.S. and perspectives on Medical Aid in Dying in the Pacific Northwest. She is interested in studying cultural death practices, rituals and beliefs which encompasses death festivals, internment practices, and afterlife beliefs. Outside of Anthropology she is literate in areas of death advocacy, the death positivity movement and the development and education of ecological internment technologies and practices.
Olivia Davis
Olivia graduated from Washington State University with a major in Human Development and a certificate in Gerontology. Olivia is interested in one day working as a licensed clinical social worker in Palliative Care or Hospice. She believes degrees in Human Development and social work will allow her to transition into this field of work nicely. Additionally, Olivia has always been interested in aging populations because they are an underserved population that can greatly benefit from younger people taking an interest in them and their well-being.
Fatima Zubedi
Fatima graduated from Washington State University with a major in Neuroscience and minor in Chemistry for pre-medicine. Fatima first developed an interest in Gerontology after four years of volunteering in the Intensive Care Unit during her high school career. She wanted to understand why certain patients readily accepted their comings to end of life while others remained in denial. She then met with Dr. Weaver her freshman year of college, and began investigating perceptions, attitudes, and anxieties surrounding death and dying in young adults in the U.S population. As a future physician, she hopes to incorporate the findings of this study into her medical practices, promoting advanced care planning to alleviate death anxieties within patients.
Alissa Brooks
Alissa is a student at WSU-Global working toward her Undergraduate degree in Human Development with a Gerontology focus, Psychology minor, and Human Services Certificate. Her interest in aging comes from working in the kitchen of a retirement community. She was amazed at the variety in older adults view of their own age and the differing opinions on death and dying. The knowledge and wisdom she has gained from conversing with older adults also piqued her interest in gerontology. Once she finishes her undergraduate degree, she wants to either continue her education in graduate school or become a case manager for hospice/aging populations. She is excited and passionate when it comes to learning about, and working with, older adults.
Emery Pederson
Emery graduated from WSU-Vancouver with her undergraduate degree in Psychology and a minor in both Human Development and Aging Studies. She is passionate about finding new ways to support those in end-of-life care and those struggling with mental health. From a young age, she has been interested in studying associated afterlife beliefs, perceptions, anxieties, treatment approaches, and rituals related to death and dying. After earning her undergraduate degree, she hopes to further her education in graduate school and to later seek out a career in mental health counseling.