Esther Calzada Brings a Community- Focused Vision to Tulane Psychology

The nationally recognized child psychologist sees New Orleans as a place where research, partnerships, and community engagement can create lasting impact.

For Dr. Esther Calzada, psychology is most meaningful when it moves beyond theory and becomes part of how communities support children and families in everyday life.

Across her career as a clinical child psychologist, she has focused on how schools, caregivers, neighborhoods, and culture shape child development and mental health, while also pushing psychology to engage more directly with the real-world systems surrounding children’s lives. Her work has taken her into classrooms, school partnerships, and community-based interventions designed to improve outcomes long before problems become crises.

This fall, Calzada will bring that approach to Tulane University as the next Chair of the Department of Psychology.

A nationally recognized scholar and academic leader, Calzada joins Tulane from The University of Texas at Austin, where she serves as Associate Dean for Research in the School of Social Work. Her research has focused particularly on Latinx children and families, immigrant communities, and the broader systems that shape child development, mental health, and educational outcomes. Her work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Education.

But beyond the research portfolio and national leadership roles, Calzada said Tulane stood out because of the university’s relationship with the city around it.

“Tulane sits at this unique intersection of rigorous scholarship and deep community engagement,” she said. 

As she learned more about Tulane and New Orleans during the search process, she saw opportunities for the kind of work that has shaped much of her career: building meaningful partnerships between universities, schools, families, and communities in ways that create measurable human impact.

What especially resonated with her was Tulane’s longstanding emphasis on service learning and community engagement, an approach she believes aligns naturally with psychology’s responsibility to understand people not in isolation, but within the environments they move through every day.

“Psychology is a perfect fit for service learning,” Calzada said. “Ultimately, psychology should focus on how individuals think, feel, and behave, and we need to understand that across diversity and lived experience.” 

Founded in 1911, Tulane’s Department of Psychology has long emphasized collaborative research, community engagement, and the study of human behavior across multiple levels of analysis, from neural systems to broader social and cultural influences. The department offers bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD degrees and is known for fostering a collaborative culture across research, teaching, and service.

Its position within Tulane’s School of Science and Engineering also creates unusual opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration across the behavioral sciences, life sciences, engineering, mathematics, and technology. The department maintains strong ties to the Tulane Brain Institute, the Tulane Violence Prevention Institute, and the Louisiana Clinical and Translational Science Center.

The department’s range of expertise was another major draw for Dr. Calzada. 

“I personally see the breadth and depth of expertise that spans research from bench to bedside as a unique strength of the department,” she said. “I’ve also observed a deep commitment to students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.” 

That combination of interdisciplinary research, collaborative culture, and student engagement reinforced her sense that Tulane offered an environment where both innovative scholarship and community-connected work could thrive.

For Calzada, whose work often bridges psychology, education, public health, and community systems, that environment felt especially aligned with the kind of collaborative research and engagement she hopes to continue building at Tulane.

Much of her scholarship has focused on Latinx children and families, immigrant communities, and other populations historically underrepresented in psychological research, examining how culture, identity, schools, and community systems shape child development and mental health outcomes.

That work has reinforced her belief that psychology must move beyond abstract theory and engage more directly with the realities children face in everyday life.

“What is it really like to be a second grader in a school that has very few resources, or where you’re the first immigrant kid to ever come in those doors?” she said.

That perspective was shaped early in her academic career, when she began recognizing how much of developmental psychology had historically overlooked the experiences of Latinx children and families, immigrant communities, and other ethnically and racially minoritized populations, including families like her own.

“I saw this pretty clear gap that child development had not paid attention historically to culture and context and how that would shape kids’ development,” she said. 

Over time, that realization pushed her work beyond simply studying child development and toward understanding how larger systems influence children’s lives, from schools and neighborhoods to language access, family support, and community infrastructure.

One of the defining moments in that evolution came during a large-scale longitudinal study she led in New York City, where she followed hundreds of children from early childhood through elementary school.

The students had entered school with strong developmental indicators and every sign that they were capable of succeeding academically. But by third grade, many were testing below grade level.

The experience reinforced how deeply educational outcomes are shaped not just by individual effort, but by the broader systems surrounding children’s lives.

“It really pushed me to think beyond individuals and toward the systems and environments shaping children’s development,” she said. 

The experience helped deepen her focus on partnerships between schools, researchers, families, and communities, and on understanding how psychology can contribute to better long-term outcomes for children.

That philosophy continues to shape both her research and her leadership approach.

“I don’t believe as much in knowledge for the sake of knowledge,” Calzada said. “I believe in knowledge for the sake of human good.” 

At Tulane, she sees an opportunity to further connect psychological science with community impact while helping elevate the department’s national visibility and collaborative culture.

She described the department’s collegiality and openness to collaboration as one of the strongest factors that drew her to Tulane, calling it a place where faculty genuinely support one another’s work and where interdisciplinary partnerships feel encouraged rather than performative.

That interdisciplinary potential also extends beyond psychology itself. Calzada said she is especially intrigued by psychology’s place within Tulane’s School of Science and Engineering, where she sees opportunities to explore how psychological science intersects with fields like artificial intelligence, engineering, and the built environment, particularly in a city like New Orleans where infrastructure, education, health, and quality of life are deeply interconnected.

“How can you connect the psychological sciences with other disciplines in truly meaningful ways?” she said. 

As she prepares to step into the role, Calzada said her initial focus will not be on making rapid changes, but on listening carefully, building relationships, and understanding the department’s existing strengths and culture.

“I think the biggest thing to do in the beginning is earn trust,” she said. 

It is a philosophy that mirrors much of her career: meaningful progress begins with relationships, grows through collaboration, and becomes lasting when institutions are willing to work alongside communities rather than apart from them.

“I believe in community and collaboration and partnerships,” Calzada said. “That’s both within the walls of the building, but also beyond that.”