Dr. Laura Kamptner is Professor of Human Development in the Child Development Department at California State University, San Bernardino. She teaches courses in child/human development, child guidance, parenting, and the history of childhood, and works with several community parent education projects which include the local jail system. As director of the Parental Intervention Project, Dr. Kamptner works with a clinical team to provide parent education and trauma recovery for men and women at the local jails through a collaboration between CSUSB and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. An attachment-based training program for clinical and MSW graduate student interns trains individuals in parent education, child guidance, child development, and trauma recovery to prepare them to teach classes at the jails in Family Relations and Trauma Recovery as well as providing case management and counseling for justice-involved individuals. Trained undergraduate interns (under clinical supervision) staff an evening program where children come to the jail weekly to visit their parents. Dr. Kamptner is also a member of the administrative team of the Infant-Toddler Success parenting project, a community parent education program designed for at-risk parents of infants and toddlers which aims to support the school readiness of children. Graduate students in child development, social work, and clinical counseling are trained as parent educators; undergraduate students are trained in weekly on campus classes in child guidance and child development to provide the staffing for the concurrent children program.
Her research interests focus on the impact of early parenting quality on later outcomes, especially mental health.
Dr. Kamptner lives in San Bernardino with her husband and dog; they (she and her husband, not the dog) make frequent trips to Boston to visit their son who’s in graduate school.