Dr. Schuster is a licensed clinical psychologist. She received her BA from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2007 and her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2014. She received specialized training in neuropsychology as a pre-doctoral intern and post-doctoral fellow at MGH/Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Schuster’s work is notably rooted in principles of community engagement and equity. Her training in community-based research is reflected in extensive ties with public schools across Massachusetts. She has surveyed over 100,000 students in school-based settings about their substance use behaviors and co-occurring mental health symptoms. Through her program of school-based research, she has also developed and tested best practice community-level early interventions (“Tier 2”) to minimize population-level impact of substance use on student health and well-being. Dr. Schuster is currently overseeing a state-funded program aimed at developing, implementing, and evaluating a novel alternative to suspension (iDECIDE; https://www.idecidemyfuture.org) as well as a PCORI-funded clinical trial aimed at evaluating methods for improving school-based SBIRT for early substance use detection.