Faculty & Staff

Faculty

Marhefka, Stephanie, PhD
Stephanie Marhefka Title: Professor
Phone: (813) 974-5810
Office: MHC 2622
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Curriculum Vitae

Stephanie Marhefka, PhD, was trained in clinical and health psychology across the lifespan at the University of Florida (2002), where her dissertation research focused on measuring medication adherence among children living with HIV. Her pediatric psychology internship and one year of postdoctoral fellowship were conducted at the University of Maryland Medical School, where she continued studying the experiences of young people living with HIV and ways to improve their quality of life. She then spent one year in a research scientist position at the New York University School of Medicine, where she worked as a psychologist and scientist as part of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention project. From there, she completed a three-year T32 postdoctoral fellowship in HIV and human sexuality at the HIV Center of the New York Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University.

Following the fellowship, she secured a tenure-track position at the University of South Florida College of Public Health, where she started as an assistant professor and grew through the ranks to tenured professor, having had excellent success in procuring research funding from multiple components of the National Institutes of Health as both principal investigator and collaborator and from the Office of Adolescent Health. In 2018, she became the assistant dean of research in public health. From there, she was recruited to the College of Nursing at USF to lead their research enterprise as senior associate dean of research (2021-2023). In 2024, she accepted a professor position in the College of Behavioral and Community Sciences within the department of Mental Health Law and Policy (now the department of Behavioral Health Science and Practice) and has continued to grow her program of research. She is excited to bring her research expertise, enthusiasm, and mentorship to the college and to learn about new ways she can support our amazing faculty.