‘A mentor for everyone’: Patty Brennan honored with Emory College’s Cuttino Award

When Emory associate teaching professor Andy Kazama heard that Patty Brennan had won the 2026 George P. Cuttino Award for Excellence in Mentoring, he was surprised.

“Wait, she doesn’t already have one? She's won so many awards, and she's been mentoring so many of us for so long,” says Kazama, who works within the Emory National Primate Research Center as well as Emory College’s psychology department. “I honestly feel guilty for not nominating her, because I would have. No one deserves it more than Patty.”

There’s good reason for Kazama’s reaction. Brennan, the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Psychology at Emory University and director of the BUILD (Biological Underpinnings in Learning and Development) Lab, has garnered the Emory College Mentoring Award (2017), Emory Williams Teaching Award (2011), Emory Friends in Faculty CLASS Award (2011) and Emory University CTC Teaching Award for the Social Sciences (2008).

In 2025, Brennan won the student-nominated Rovee-Collier Mentor Award for the International Society for Developmental Psychobiology and the Eleanor Main Graduate Faculty Mentor Award from Laney Graduate School, alongside her graduate student Chaela Nutor, who won the Graduate Student Mentor Award.

“Patty deserves the highest award for mentoring at Emory because she is a kind, warm and empathetic woman who has demonstrated the unique ability to connect with everyone she meets and leaves them better off,” says Elaine Johnson, assistant teaching professor of psychology, who Brennan mentored.

Even so, Brennan didn’t see the award coming. Brennan, who is also head of the teaching track promotion committee, thought she was headed to meet Emory College’s interim dean and vice dean of faculty about the committee’s work. Instead, they informed her that she had won the Cuttino Award.

“I was shocked. It always feels good to be recognized for the hard work that you do. It also made me reflect on my own career mentors and how I learned to be a mentor,” says Brennan, who holds a bachelor’s in psychology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a master’s and PhD from the University of Southern California (USC).

In three decades at Emory, Brennan has developed a research program internationally recognized for its rigorous, multidisciplinary approach to understanding the intergenerational effects of stress and psychopathology on development.

Her innovative work examines perinatal and familial risk factors associated with children’s cognitive development, emotional reactivity, sleep, mental health and physical health outcomes.

The author of more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, Brennan has served as principal investigator or co-investigator on multiple large-scale studies funded by the National Institutes of Health.

“What is special about her is her long-range vision and constant desire to keep pushing to improve the path and journey for the next generation,” says Ali Cohen, assistant professor of psychology.

Elaine Walker, the 2023 Cuttino Award winner and the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, nominated Brennan for the award, saying she is among the “top researchers and most gifted teachers and mentors” at Emory.

The Cuttino Award, established in 1997 by alumnus John T. Glover in honor of the late Emory history professor, celebrates exemplary mentorship.

“Like George Cuttino, she [Brennan] has inspired numerous graduate and undergraduate students. Professor Cuttino was known as a guide and counselor beyond the classroom. She is widely recognized for extending her mentorship of students into their careers by linking them with scholar communities outside the college. I cannot imagine anyone more deserving of the award,” Walker wrote in her nomination. 

A mentor for everyone

Brennan credits her mentoring philosophy to her own graduate school mentor, the late Sarnoff Mednick, professor emeritus of psychology at USC.

“He had a way of treating me like a human being first and then a student and researcher. That set the stage for how I think of mentoring the whole person,” Brennan says.

Madeline Proctor, a newly minted 2026 grad who was an honors thesis student and graduate research assistant in Brennan’s class, attests to this mentoring legacy.

“Dr. Brennan has said that early in her career, she had a mentor who was truly an angel on earth, and that’s exactly how I think of her,” Proctor says.

It’s not just her lab students; Brennan mentors junior faculty, students outside her field, colleagues across the university — anyone who seeks her out.

“Patty is really a mentor for everyone,” Cohen says. “In a context where you’re pulled in so many different directions, for her to take that time and focus and give that individual attention to different people, whether they’re in her lab or not, is really inspiring to me as a mentor.”

Jocelyn Stanfield, a fourth-year clinical psychology graduate student in the BUILD Lab, wanted to work with Brennan as an Emory undergraduate student because of Brennan’s research related to Black women. Brennan helped Stanfield get into graduate school at Brown University and then return to her lab as a doctoral student.

“What makes Patty a good mentor is that she’ll never leave you,” Stanfield says. “She’s like a cheerleader, always on your side.”

Facilitating students’ passions

Clinical psychology, Brennan says, is one of the best doctoral degrees because of the immense possibilities.

“I try to help students figure out their passion and then facilitate that passion,” says Brennan, who served as the psychology department’s chair from 2018-22.  “People’s career trajectories change. I support them on their journey, knowing that they don’t know the ending any more than I do.”

Under Brennan’s tutelage, students have gone on to become crime analysts, Harvard medical and plastic surgery fellows, clinical psychologists, neuropsychologists, cybersecurity analysts, and professors in pediatrics and psychology.

“It’s not just me saying what they should do, but listening to them and hearing what they need,” Brennan says. "Sometimes it comes to a student having to say, ‘Hey, it’s great that you’re giving me more space, but I need more structure.’”

Brennan encourages fun, celebrating wins and getting to know each student personally — including their families. She hosts white elephant and cocktail parties and summer porch sessions at her home. But even more importantly, students say, she’s a safe space when times are tough.

For example, Shania Friedman, now a third-year PhD student, learned she was pregnant just a month after receiving admission to her doctoral program. She dreaded telling Brennan.

“On the phone call, she asked, ‘Is everything okay?’ I answered, ‘Yeah. I'm pregnant.’ — like it was some terminal illness. She helped me plan ahead as a first-year student and plan my course load so I could prioritize bonding with my son,” Friedman says. “Patty really models such a beautiful life balance, and it rubs off on us so we don’t feel guilty.”

Constance Wilson, a clinical psychology PhD student in the BUILD lab agrees.

“You think you’re just having these conversations, but she is thinking about ways she can mentor you to get to that goal if that is what you really want,” says Wilson, who also previously served as a post-baccalaureate research assistant with Brennan. “Whether I’m in her office, on her porch, at a conference, it’s the same Patty. She validates your experience, and she’s gonna push you. ‘It’s hard, but this is the way forward. I'm gonna walk with you, we’re gonna get there together.’”

Brennan says some crucial mentoring moments occur when a student is stuck.

“It’s like unraveling the mystery together. When a student is demotivated, you need to meet them, lift them up and remind them of the long view and that what they are doing is important,” she says.