Each year, the College of Science and Health recognizes faculty who have made significant scientific contributions in their area of research. We are honored to announce the recipients of the 2025 Excellence in Research Awards - Rev. Dr. Joseph Ferrari, Vincent de Paul Professor of Psychology (Excellence in Research Award), and Dr. Kashica Webber-Ritchey, Associate Professor of Nursing (Mid-Career Excellence in Research Award).
Rev. Dr. Joseph Ferrari received his Ph.D. in 1989 in experimental (personality-social) psychology from Adelphi University in New York and first joined DePaul University in 1993 as a Research Scientist, and then in 1994 as a Visiting Assistant Professor (Term faculty). He has served DePaul for 32 years. Rev. Dr. Ferrari was ordained as a Permanent Roman Catholic Deacon for the Joliet Diocese in 2013, incorporating spiritual guidance in his roles as both educator and researcher. He has also held several honorary scholar appointments at international universities, including the University of Tasmania, AU, All Hallows College (Dublin), and the University of Genoa, Italy.
Rev. Dr. Ferrari's research contributions span a variety of subject areas including procrastination, impostor tendencies, shame/guilt emotions, attitude change, perfectionism, community-based applied studies on
blood donating, substance abuse recovery, safety belts in shopping carts, home and office clutter, psychological perceptions of home, immigrant children, university mission and value beliefs, rural health care, spiritual leadership among the unhoused, and US Catholic deacons. His prodigious scholarship has culminated in more than 367 peer-reviewed publications, over 700 scholarly conference presentations, and 8 books. He is considered an internationally renowned expert in chronic procrastination studies, on which he has published an academic monograph, a key research text, an APA counseling book, and refereed papers, in addition to engaging in significant public outreach and education on the topic. Collectively, his work has been cited over 30,115 times and indicates momentous impact in his research field (h-impact factor = 93), substantially shaping theoretical understanding in his disciplinary specialties. Rev. Dr. Ferrari was co-PI on two NIH grants totaling over $4.2 million on recovery home settings for persons in recovery. In recognition of his achievements, he was first named a Fellow of the American Psychological Association in 2002 and has since received Fellow status from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Society for Community Research and Action, and the Association for Psychological Science. The American Psychological Association awarded him the "Distinguished Italian-American Psychologist" Award in 2016. He was the founder and Editor in Chief of the
Journal of Prevention and Intervention in Community for more than 28 years, demonstrating ongoing leadership in his field.
His research on chronic and academic procrastination (and more recently, on clutter and mental health) in particular has shaped both academic and popular conceptions of these widespread phenomena and gained notable national and international media coverage. Rather than a problem of time management, Rev. Dr. Ferrari has demonstrated that procrastination is a habitual lifestyle shaped by key emotional and cognitive factors, transforming the concept's definition and approach. He has written numerous op-eds and self-help guides on procrastination for the general public, including a 2010 book entitled
Still Procrastinating? The No Regrets Guide to Getting It Done, in addition to hosting a
Psychology Today blog on the topic, providing recommendations based on his research findings. He has been interviewed by dozens of media platforms across radio, television, podcasting and print media.
Dr. Kashica Webber-Ritchey received her Ph.D. in 2014 in Nursing from the University of Arizona, joined DePaul in 2015, and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2023. Since 2015 she has made substantial contributions to academic research in her field, with over 30 peer-reviewed publications in prestigious journals such as
Preventive Medicine, Journal of Advanced Nursing, and
The Journal of Nursing Administration. Her work has been cited over 460 times since 2020, according to Google Scholar. In 2022 Dr. Webber-Ritchey was awarded the Feleta Wilson Award by the American Public Health Association Public Health Nursing Section, which recognizes mid-career nurses who have had a significant impact on community needs and enhanced health outcomes in underserved populations.
Dr. Webber-Ritchey's research focuses on obesity-related health disparities in Black youth, and she has published groundbreaking studies in this subject area. In 2018 she led an interdisciplinary team of scientists from nursing, applied mathematics, statistics, geographic information systems, and biomechanics to study the impact of environmental variables, the built environment, and parental involvement on physical activity in African American children. The findings were published in the
Journal of Nursing Practice Applications and Reviews of Research. She is currently working on a National Institutes of Health-funded project entitled "Black Girls Move (BGM): A Daughter/Mother Intervention to Prevent Obesity by Increasing Physical Activity and Improving Dietary Intake among Black Adolescent Daughters." The project aims to identify quantitative and qualitative relationships among Black mothers' racial identity, racial socialization, perceived discrimination and traumatic symptoms with the physical activity and dietary behaviors of their Black daughters.
Dr. Webber-Ritchey has also conducted important research on COVID-19 and its impact on nursing practice. She acted as the leading nursing scientist on the “Nursing During COVID-19" research team at DePaul University's School of Nursing, which consisted of 12 SON faculty. The team conducted a large-scale qualitative research study that sampled the diverse experiences of nurse practitioners in the US during the early stages of the pandemic, providing critical narratives of Black, Latine, Asian, Multiracial, Native American, and trans/nonbinary nurses. The team's work was acknowledged with the Provost's Award for Excellence in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in 2023.
We celebrate Rev. Dr. Joseph Ferrari's and Dr. Webber-Ritchey's work, which exemplifies DePaul's guiding mission of social justice, service, and the spirit of research excellence.