Jessica Troilo

Jessica Troilo is an Associate Professor in Child Development and Family Studies at the College of Education and Human Services at West Virginia University in Morgantown, WV. Troilo has been working in the family science field since 2000. She is a contributor to Psychology Today.

She earned her B.A. in Economics (2000) from Allegheny College in Meadville, Pa, and earned her master’s in Family Mediation (2005) and doctorate (2009) in Human Development and Family Studies from the University of Missouri. She was awarded with the Most Outstanding Dissertation award from the University of Missouri in 2009. During this time, she also was a co-facilitator and co-author of "Focus on Kids," Missouri's divorced parent education program.

Troilo's areas of interest are cultural conceptions of family members (i.e., stereotypes) with diverse marital and parental statuses, and divorced father/father involvement. These were the focus of her dissertation and much of her recent work. As a result of a WVU research award, she, along with colleagues, have been pursuing a better understanding of post-divorce coparenting and its impacts on adults and children.

During her time at WVU, Troilo also had a secondary contract with WVU Extension as a parenting specialist. Her most notable outcomes were in the training of divorced parent educators across the state and the creation of The Parenting Press. Most recently, she and her colleagues are attempting to better understand how the opioid epidemic has impacted teachers in West Virginia.

Troilo has taught courses on marriage and families, family communication and interaction, family stress, ethnicity and families, divorced families, and research methods.