Awards
- Titled Professor (Emeritus) - 2019
- Chancellor's Professor of Psychology
About Charles Goodlett
Professor Goodlett received a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Kentucky in 1977, an M.A. (1981) and Ph.D. (1983) in Biopsychology from the State University of New York at Binghamton, and he completed postdoctoral training in Developmental Neuroscience at the Worcester Foundation of Experimental Biology (Shrewsbury, MA) and in Neuroanatomy at the University of Iowa Department of Anatomy (Iowa City, IA). He was appointed Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology in January 1993—arriving on campus the very week the School of Science opened its campus buildings—and was one of the four founding members of the graduate Psychobiology of Addictions program (now Addiction Neuroscience). He was tenured in 1998, promoted to Full Professor in 1999, and in 2019 was named a Chancellor’s Professor.
Professor Goodlett’s primary research focuses on animal models of neurodevelopmental disorders and his research on models of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) span more than 30 years, with support from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). He has utilized rats, mice, and sheep as experimental models, each with its own advantages for understanding the effects of developmental alcohol exposure on the resulting behavioral and neuroanatomical outcomes that characterize FASD. His collaborative work helped identify key risk factors that influence the type and extent of brain damage associated with pregnancies at risk for alcohol exposure and how those predict the types of neurodevelopmental outcomes evident in the FASD spectrum. These include the importance of the pattern of alcohol exposure and blood alcohol profiles (binge drinking); the critical role of the developmental timing of exposure; the discovery of cerebellar-dependent learning impairments that varied with pattern and timing of exposure and that predicted similar outcomes later found in humans with FASD; impairments in spatial cognition; and the effectiveness of behavioral rehabilitation driven by experience-dependent neuroplasticity. He was named the recipient of the Rosett Award in 2016 by the FASD Study Group of the Research Society on Alcoholism in recognition for contributions to FASD research. Professor Goodlett’s current research efforts also now includes an ongoing collaboration with Dr. Randall Roper (Biology) studying a mouse model of Down syndrome (DS) that focuses on the role of DYRK1A (one of the triplicated genes in DS) as a key contributor to altered brain development evident in DS
Professor Goodlett has a long history of service to his profession. He served on over 40 NIH review panels including two terms as an appointed member, served as the appointed Editor-in-Chief of the Elsevier journal Alcohol from 2005 to 2012, and is a past President of the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Study Group. He also has been committed to faculty governance and service to the IUPUI faculty. He was an At-Large IFC representative for two terms, a UFC representative, a two-term At-Large member of the IUPUI Campus P&T committee, served multiple terms on the IFC Campus Planning committee and the Research Affairs committee, and served on six IUPUI Faculty Boards of Review. Professor Goodlett was appointed emeritus status in 2022 and remains active in funded research, service on graduate committees, and as a member of the internal advisory board of the IU Alcohol Research Center.