Celebrating Our Graduate Students

Jo Alanis

Dissertation: Perceptions and Effects of Overqualification Among Immigrant Workers

Description: This dissertation focuses on the overqualification experiences of immigrant workers in the United States, one population that is particularly affected by overqualification. In this work, a model of perceived overqualification will be built that investigates feelings of relative deprivation, or the sense that one is deprived of something compared to others, as well as the impact of factors unique to the immigrant experience, such as acculturation. Through this research, Jo aims to identify strategies organizations and individuals can adopt to reduce the negative consequences of perceived overqualification.

Career Goals: At the moment, Jo is eager to continue working on her dissertation, but will be searching for applied roles (preferably in people or data analytics and/or employee experience) in the coming months.

Brian Brutzman

Dissertation: Change For the Better: Assessing Readiness to Adopt Applied Behavior Analysis in Michigan Public Schools

Description: Applied behavior analysis (ABA) offers an array of treatment options which have been shown to improve outcomes for students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, in Michigan, ABA has not been thoroughly integrated into public schools and is thus underutilized in classroom settings. This dissertation aims to assess the organizational readiness of Michigan educators to adopt specialized ABA classrooms in public schools and will help illuminate why applied behavior analytic treatment has not been widely adopted in Michigan public schools as it has elsewhere. It will also identify potential barriers to comprehensive integration of ABA treatment in schools and provide insight into how educators, parents, advocates, and policymakers might leverage behavioral science to improve academic outcomes.

Career Goals: Brian is committed to bringing evidence-based behavioral treatment to schools. His ideal future career would involve ongoing research on this topic, partnering with school districts to improve their capacity to meet students' needs, and advocacy for best practices in school-based behavioral treatment.

Sarah Carroll

Dissertation: The Origins of Antisocial Behavior: Influences of Development and Genotype-Environment Interplay

Description: Sarah is examining the role of genotype-environment interaction (GxE) in the development of behavioral problems across childhood and adolescence. As part of her dissertation, she is developing models to assess GxE longitudinally. 

Career Goals: Sarah’s long-term career goal is to conduct research that integrates developmental and behavioral genetic approaches to the study of youth psychopathology.

Connor Eichenauer

Dissertation: A Model of User Reactions Toward and Beliefs About Selection Procedures

Description: Connor's dissertation investigates how employee selection decision-makers choose to utilize (or not) candidate information from different selection procedures when evaluating candidates. Specifically, Connor hypothesizes that utilization of candidate information is driven by hiring manager beliefs about the predictiveness and fairness of selection procedures from which the information was gathered. Nine dimensions of perceptions toward predictor constructs (i.e., candidate attributes measured) and predictor methods (i.e., how attributes were measured) are proposed to influence predictiveness and fairness beliefs. The goal of this research is to identify why hiring managers often do not utilize the most valid predictors when making selection decisions, which would facilitate the development of interventions to improve the predictive accuracy of selection decisions by reducing science-practice gaps.

Career Goals: Connor plans to be on the applied job market in Spring 2024. He is most interested in roles related to employee selection and assessments (including EEO and legal issues) and leadership development.

Megan Mikhail

Dissertation: The Impact of Disadvantage on Risk for Disordered Eating in Youth: Longitudinal Associations and Interactions with Genetic Influences.

Description: Mikhail seeks to expand our understanding of how socioeconomic disadvantage (e.g., experiences of poverty and financial stress) may impact risk for eating disorders (EDs) by examining genotype x environment interactions between disadvantage and disordered eating as well as longitudinal associations between disadvantage and later ED risk in girls and boys.

Career Goals: Megan plans to pursue an academic career that integrates research and clinical practice to advance care for EDs, particularly for people who have historically been underserved.

Abigail Mundorf

Dissertation: Automatic and Controlled Influences on Memory Organizations

Description: This dissertation uses computational modeling to examine the automatic and controlled mechanisms that determine how we navigate through our memories. For example, events are often recalled in the same order they were experienced, but it is unclear if this organization occurs automatically or if it is a result of internal strategies. Across four experiments, I found evidence that order information is both learned and retrieved automatically, but intentional strategies also play an important role in guiding memory search. 

Career Goals: After graduation I hope to continue doing memory research that both advances theory development and provides applications to help with treatment of memory conditions. I am currently seeking a postdoctoral fellowship in a memory lab.

Mallet Reid

Dissertation: Invisible No More: Highlighting Women of Color's Recovery Experiences From Trauma and Addiction

Description: Although women of color experience heightened rates of trauma and addiction, their experiences and recovery needs are neglected in clinical research. This study is a qualitative exploration of women of color's recovery experiences and will identify issues that researchers and clinicians should address to promote recovery for this group.

Career Goals: Mallet intends to pursue a tenure-track position where he will conduct community-engaged, feminist research on trauma, substance abuse, and substance misuse.

Prachi Solanki

Dissertation: Testing Impression Formation From a Bayesian Perspective

Description: Prachi's dissertation aims to answer the question, "How do people combine various sources of information when forming impressions of others?" Past social cognition research has identifed two broad types of information that can impact impression formation: individuating information and categorical (stereotype) information. Individuating information has been defined as information about a specific individual such as their past behaviours or hobbies. Stereotype information has been understood as information about a person's social or demographic classification like their race or age. Prachi's goal is to move beyond this traditional distinction - which assumes stereotype information to be the base rate or prior - by exploring if both types of information can be combined and used within a Bayesian framework. This work also aims to link social-cognitive work in impression formation with the broader literature on Bayesian decision-making in cognitive psychology.

Career Goals: Prachi hopes to find an industry position as a behavioural scientist where she can apply her quantitative and research skills to solve real-world problems.

Alexandra Vazquez

Dissertation: Illuminating the Developmental Etiology of Youth Resilience

Description: Alexandra's dissertation is funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's National Research Service Award (1F31HD111273-01). The overall aim of her project is to examine and compare developmental trajectories of academic, social, and psychological resilience, and to identify longitudinally predictive epigenetic mechanisms underlying resilience.

Career goals: Alexandra hopes to pursue a career that combines research and clinical work, in such a way that allows her to help foster resilience among clients in the short term and help inform intervention and policy efforts to promote resilience among marginalized populations in the long term.

Lauren Wiklund

Dissertation: Sexual Well-Being Among Queer Women of Color

Description: Lauren’s dissertation research will utilize mixed-methods to explore sexual well-being among queer women of color (QWOC). Her project focuses on the experiences and assets of a marginalized population that is hyper-visible in the sexual violence and risk literature but largely invisible in scientific considerations of positive and protective aspects of sexuality and sexual health. Lauren received a MSU Consortium for SGM Health Research Award and a Graduate School Research Enhancement Fellowship to fund this project.

Career goals: Lauren will be starting a clinical psychology internship in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She is pursuing an innovative clinical science career that uses intersectionality and community engaged methods to magnify joy and resistance within BIPOC LGBTQIA+ communities and foster health equity among marginalized groups.