Fall 2020 Newsletter | Awards and Updates

Successful Doctoral Dissertation Defenses

Hallie Brown, Early Development of ADHD and ODD Symptoms from the Toddler to Preschool Years, Clinical Psychology, Advisor: Elizabeth Harvey
Krystal Cashen, Stigmatization and Community Connections: Associations with Mental Health, Sexual Identity Development, and Peer Relationships in Emerging Adults with LGBQ+ Parents, Developmental Science, Advisor: Harold Grotevant
Beata Kaminska-Kordowska, Value and Action Encoding for Natural Outcomes and Ethanol in the Medial Prefrontal and Orbitofrontal Cortex, Behavioral Neuroscience, Advisor: David Moorman
Patrick Sadil, Uncovering the neural and behavioral factors that underlie changes in processing visual orientation, Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience, Advisor: Rosie Cowell
Merika (Wilson) Sanders, Shared neural substrates of perception and memory: Testing the assumptions and predictions of the Representational-Hierarchical Account, Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience, Advisor: Rosie Cowell

Successful Master's Thesis Defenses

Christina Hogan, Neural Markers of Emotion Reactivity: Developmental Differences and Associated Risk for Psychopathology, Clinical Psychology, Advisor: Jennifer McDermott

Awards and Honors

Rosemary Cowell, Katherine Dixon-Gordon, and David Moorman have been awarded tenure.

Lisa Sanders and Agnès Lacreuse have been promoted to Full Professor.

Ashley Woodman and Erik Cheries have been promoted to Senior Lecturer. John Bickford has been promoted to Senior Lecturer II.

Tammy Rahhal awarded 2020 Manning Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Read full article

Quinnehtukqut McLamore, a fourth-year student in the Psychology of Peace and Violence concentration of the Social Psychology program working with Dr. Bernhard Leidner, was awarded the fifth annual Keith Rayner Memorial Graduate Student Research Award for the project, Challenge and Threat Framings of COVID-19 Messaging and Downstream Consequences. Read more about the project

Molly Mather has had her Master's thesis "Greater negative affect and mixed emotions during spontaneous reactions to sad films in older than younger adults" accepted for publication in the European Journal of Aging. The study discovered that older adults might be able to regulate emotion responses better than younger persons via more efficient recovery after a negative experience.

Jasmine Dixon was appointed student committee member for the Society of Clinical Neuropsychology (Division 40) Women in Neuropsychology group. She was selected from a large pool of talented applicants and began her 2-year term in August 2020. As part of this experience, she will participate in the SCN Student Leadership Development program. This program consists of monthly virtual meetings, seminars, and networking hours. Students will be funded to participate in APA's Emerging Leaders in Psychology Academy, which will commence in September.

Brien J. Goodwin was awarded the 2020 Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy Student Diversity Award for his published paper "Extending the context-responsive psychotherapy integration framework to cultural processes in psychotherapy." Brien is an advanced graduate student in the clinical psychology program, and he is currently on pre-doctoral internship at the Institute of Living in Harford, CT. Read more about the project

Alice E. Coyne has been awarded a research grant from the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy (APA Division 29) for her project, "Uncovering Trainable Therapist-Level Pathways to Improve Patient Outcomes." Alice is an advanced graduate student in the clinical psychology program, and she is currently on pre-doctoral internship at the Charleston Consortium in South Carolina. Read more about the project

Michael J. Constantino, a professor in the clinical psychology program, was awarded the 2020 Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy (APA Division 29) Mid-Career Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Advancement of Psychotherapy. This award recognizes scholarly contributions made through one’s mid-career to the advancement of psychotherapy research, practice, training, and theory, as well as to the Society.

PhD Spotlight

Krystal CashenKrystal Cashen, Developmental Science, successfully defended her dissertation "Stigmatization and community connections: Associations with mental health, sexual identity development, and peer relationships in emerging adults with LGBQ+ parents" on July 22, 2020. Her mixed-methods study, supervised by Dr. Hal Grotevant, involved in-depth interviews with emerging adults (ages 18-29) who identified as having one or more LGBQ+ parents, and followed with a broader survey. The study explored how young adults identify the types of connections they have had with the LGBT+ community, how they have formed community with other young people who also have LGBQ+ parents, and what those connections mean to them.

Krystal has moved to the University of Kentucky for a post-doc with Dr. Rachel Farr, noted scholar in the area of LGBTQ families. She has already started teaching a large section of developmental psychology online and will be developing new research that follows up on her dissertation and the other work on adoptive families she conducted in the Rudd Adoption Lab at UMass. We wish Krystal all the best in her new position!