Seven of every 10 college seniors graduated with student loan debt last year. The average debt for those students: more than $29,000.

Jill Norvilitis, professor and chair of the psychology department at Buffalo State, The State University of New York, will discuss student debt at the next Colloquium Series in Psychological Sciences and Human Behavior at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College.

Norvilitis will address how student attitudes toward debt and money are changing, but many students still struggle to manage credit. She will also touch on debt risk factors and how student loan debt may be related.

Her discussion, titled “College Student Debt: Changes and Challenges,” begins at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 18, in the second-floor auditorium of Penn State Behrend’s Reed Union Building. Admission is free and open to the public.

Norvilitis has worked with several students with significant credit card debt and has examined the roles that personality factors, knowledge and external influences play in predicting why students acquire debt. Her work has been published in numerous journals, including the Journal of Economic Psychology, the Journal of Applied Social Psychology and the Journal of Attention Disorders.

“College Student Debt: Changes and Challenges” is hosted by Penn State Behrend’s B.A. and B.S. in Psychology degree programs and by the student Psychology Coalition with support from the Susan Hirt Hagen CORE (Community Outreach, Research, and Evaluation), the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Student Activity Fee. For additional information, contact Carol Wilson, assistant professor of psychology, at 814-898-6082 or clw33@psu.edu.