DeCoteau joined St. Lawrence in 2005, and currently serves as the Absalom Graves Gaines Professor in the Psychology Department.
His tie-ins to athletics are lengthy. He was a student-athlete himself, playing NCAA Division III hockey at Mercyhurst, and was also a member of the club hockey team as a graduate student at the University of Utah. Following his hockey career, he has spent many years coaching local youth sports, and oversaw the creation of the girls hockey program at Canton Minor Hockey.
He also served on the Athletic Advisory Committee from 2012-2016, has functioned as the faculty representative for both the men’s and women’s hockey programs, and was on the Appleton Users Group Committee which played an essential role in the 2019 renovation project at Appleton Arena.
In his research, DeCoteau investigates the neurobiology of motor and cognitive behavior including in models of human neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders.
Currently, he regularly teaches courses in Introductory Psychology, Introduction to Biological Psychology, and Animal Behavior with lab, as well as seminars in Behavioral Neuroscience and Human Neuropsychology.
Prior to his career at St. Lawrence, DeCoteau earned a B.A. in Psychology from Mercyhurst and a Ph.D. in Cognition and Neural Science from the University of Utah. He was also a postdoctoral fellow at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT.
