Associate Professor, Counseling; Gender Studies Faculty

Dr. Cox is a licensed psychologist and is an Associate Professor of Counseling and a member of the Gender Studies faculty. She teaches several graduate level courses including: Couple and Family Therapy (COU 633), Research in Gender Issues (COU 600), The Helping Relationship (COU610), Seminar in Counseling (COU 665) and directs faculty-student research teams. 

Dr. Cox’s research interests involve the areas of women’s emotional and relational development in cultural context. Specifically, she focuses her research on women’s gendered experiences of emotion, namely anger, and how women use anger to resist, oppose, and create needed change in their lives and communities. In the last three years, Dr. Cox has launched a project, with the help of teams of counseling graduate students, to study women’s relationships with women as they occur against the backdrop of U.S. beauty culture. In this project, her research team is examining how women relate to each other, whether as mothers and daughters, friends, strangers, neighbors, or co-workers - - and how dominant beauty culture standards for appearance enter, shape, and become shaped by these interactions and relationships. Within this project her team of researchers find themselves particularly concerned with a variety of health and relationship issues that appear to be tied to both relationship mutuality and beauty culture in some way (e.g., depression, disordered eating).  In addition to the work taking place in her Beauty Culture research team, Dr. Cox is also collaborating with Dr. Etta Madden (Professor of English from Missouri State) to study women’s spiritual autobiographies.  This project employs another research team of graduate students from both Counseling and Religious Studies. Drs. Cox and Madden hope to expand this research effort in the future and recruit students (and interested faculty) from these and other disciplines to join them in collecting and analyzing these narratives.  Dr. Cox’s research is frequently highlighted in such popular venues as Prevention Magazine, Reuter’s Health, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Working Mother Magazine, and ABC News Online.  Missouri State has recognized Dr. Cox’s extensive research by awarding her both a University research award (2005) as well as the College of Education research award (2000).  She has published numerous journal articles, and her most recent include:

Robles-Pina, R. A., DeFrance, E., Cox, D., & Woodward, A. (2005). Depression in urban Hispanic adolescents. The International Journal on School Disaffection, 3, 8-14.

Cox, D. L., & St. Clair, S. (2005). A new perspective on women’s anger: Therapy through the lens of anger diversion. Women & Therapy, 28 (2), 77-90.

Cox, D. L., Van Velsor, P., & Hulgus, J. F. (2004). Who me, angry? Diversion patterns in women. Healthcare for Women International. 25, 872-893.

Cox, D. L., Van Velsor, P., Hulgus, J. F., Davis, C., Dickens, D., Smenner, M., & Weatherman, S. (2004). What’s the use in getting mad? Instrumentality and anger in women’s relationships. Healthcare for Women International. 25, 813-834.

Sommer, C., Weatherman, S., & Cox, D. L. (2004). Reflections on heterosexism. In S. K. Anderson and V. A. Middleton (Eds.), Explorations in oppression, diversity, and privilege. Brooks/Cole.

In addition to these journal publications, Dr. Cox has also co-authored two books which include:  Cox, D. L., Bruckner, K. H., & Stabb, S. D. (2003). The anger advantage. Broadway-Doubleday Books/Random House, New York, NY and Cox, D. L., Stabb, S. D., & Bruckner, K. H. (1999). Women’s anger: Clinical and developmental perspectives. Washington, D.C.:Brunner-Mazel.

Dr. Cox is very active in the Springfield, Missouri community and within her professional organization (American Psychology Association).  As a member of the MSU Gender Studies Faculty, she has participated for the past several years in the planning of Women’s History Month (WHM), and specifically in connecting women’s organizations in the surrounding community with the activities taking place during WHM, both on and off campus.  In addition, Dr. Cox is currently serving as Vice President for Practice of the Division of Family Psychology of the American Psychological Association. In this role, she works to keep the voices of practitioners alive within her large division and also acts as a liaison between Family Psychology and the APA’s Board of Professional Affairs.  Dr. Cox also has a private psychology practice in the Springfield area, where she specializes in working with women.