Twenty-five win MFP fellowships to receive training for HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, research training and mental health services.

By Jo-Anne Fournier

The Minority Fellowship Program (MFP) has selected 25 new fellows to receive MFP fellowships for the 1999-2000 academic year. The program provides financial support and professional guidance to individuals pursuing doctoral degrees in psychology through the support of APA and funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and the National Institute on Aging.

The eight Mental Health Services Fellows are:

* Mariabelle De La Torre, who received her BA from the University of Puerto Rico this summer and began her graduate studies this fall at the Caribbean Center for Postgraduate Studies. During her undergraduate training she studied tendencies in language development among children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

* Wendy Fung, who received her BA from Wellesley College in 1998 and began her graduate studies at the University of Southern California this fall. She is working with Cameron Camp, PhD, and Harvey Sterns, PhD, to develop the InterpreCare System, which consists of a series of language boards used to facilitate communications between staff and non-English speaking residents with funding from the National Institute on Aging.

* Monica Jefferson, who received her BA from State University of New York, Stony Brook, in 1999 and began her first year of graduate studies at Ohio State University this fall. She plans to conduct research on current therapies and assessment processes in order to determine their validity and reliability with respect to the general population and minority populations specifically.

* Kathleen Kawamura, who received her MS from the University of Massachusetts and began her doctoral studies there last spring. Her master's thesis focused on the differences in perfection across culture in college students. Her dissertation will examine whether these higher levels of perfectionism and parental authoritarianism have a relationship to higher levels of physiological problems in Asian-American college students.

* Angela LaRocque, who received her BA from the University of North Dakota and began her first year of graduate studies there this fall. She has worked on the research team of MFP alumni, J. Douglas McDonald, PhD, which tested the Orthogonal Theory of Biculturalism that states bicultural individuals display higher degrees of mental health and adaptive functioning. She has co-authored several articles including "AIDS/HIV knowledge, attitudes and beliefs between American Indian tribal and majority culture state college students" by McDonald, et al in The North Dakota Journal of Human Services, (Vol. 2, p. 3-11, 1998).

* Margaret Linton, who received her BA from Swarthmore College and began her third year of doctoral studies at the City University of New York this fall. Her dissertation will research the validity on the TEMAS, a projective psychological assessment instrument created by Giuseppe Costantino, PhD, for African-American and Hispanic children to age 12. Her studies will attempt to test the range of applicability to older African-American children.

* Victoria Ngo, who received her BA from the University of California, Davis, in 1998 and began her first year of graduate studies at Vanderbilt University this fall. She is interested in minority mental health issues, particularly the psychosocial functioning of Asian-American adolescents in the family context.

* Danielle Torres, who received her MA from Pepperdine University in 1997 and began her third year of doctoral studies at the University of Oregon this fall. She studies the intersection of gender and ethnic-minority issues in early career development, particularly with Latino populations. More specifically, Torres investigates family influences on career and educational goal development and achievement. She also co-authored "Assessing barriers to women's career adjustment" by McWhirter, E.H. and Rasheed, S. in Journal of Career Adjustment, (Vol. 4, No. 6, p. 425-49, 1998).

The six substance-abuse fellows are:

* Patricia Eagle Elk, who received her MA from the University of South Dakota in 1992 and began her second year of doctoral studies there this fall. Her research focuses on substance-abuse issues among Native Americans. She has worked for more than 20 years in the field of chemical dependency as a counselor/therapist, administrator and educator. She is interested in dual diagnosis, and is working on normalizing psychological tests on the Native American populations.

* Erica Holmes-Pettigrew, who received her BA from California State University, Dominguez Hill, in 1998 and began her second year of graduate studies at the California School of Professional Psychology. Her clinical interest lies in the area of substance abuse among African-Americans, women and Latinas. She is particularly interested in how childhood sexual trauma and a family history of substance abuse correlate with adult substance use and hinders successful treatment completion.

* Dawn Jackson, who received her MS from the University of Wisconsin and began her third year of doctoral studied this fall at Rutgers University. Her research interests on cultural identity in group therapy helped Jackson develop and co-facilitate a multicultural substance abuse group for women in the clinic of the Rutgers Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology.

* Brian McGregor, who received his BA from Morehouse College in 1999 and began his first year of graduate studies at the University of South Carolina this fall. He will examine how African males deal with stress and anger expressions. McGregor will consider several variables such as academic record, alcohol and drug use or abuse.

* Leslie Steve, who received her MA from University of California, Santa Barbara, and began her second year of doctoral studies at the University of Nevada, Reno. She has eight years of experience providing counseling services for community members of the Fallon Paiute Shoshone Tribe in Fallon Nevada, and the Reno Sparks Indian Colony Prevention Coalition, a federally funded substance-abuse prevention program.

* Amy Williams, who received her BA from the University of Montana and began her second year of graduate training at Utah State University, Logan, this fall. She is the first American Indian in psychology to be awarded a President's Fellowship for her academic record at Utah State.

The nine mental health research fellows are:

* Karen Cheng, who received her BS from Westmont College in 1996 and has begun her fourth year of graduate studies in social psychology at University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on the understanding of biculturalism and looking at ways to ease the burden of juggling two cultures. Her master's thesis, under the direction of Curtis Hardin, PhD, attempted to understand how two languages might function independently in the same person's mind.

* Poh-Pheng Chua, who received her BA from California State University, Fresno, in 1998 and began her second year of graduate studies in social psychology at Pennsylvania State University this fall. She is investigating stereotyping and prejudice from the target's perspective.

* Ingrid Cordon, who received her MA from the University of California, Davis, in 1999 and began her first year of doctoral studies in developmental psychology there this fall. Her doctoral research on children's social and cognitive development will further understanding about the social, economic and cultural pressures that many parents face. She plans to conduct research that will lead to more effective parenting programs and services for underserved families. She co-wrote "Evaluating Spanish protocols for teaching bonding, home safety and health-care skills to a mother reported for child abuse" with John R. Lutzker, Kathryn M. Bigelow and Ronald M. Doctor in Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry (Vol. 29, 41-54, 1998).

* Amanda Cumberland, who received her BS from Texas A&M University on 1994 and began her fifth year of graduate studies in developmental psychology at Arizona State University this fall. Her master's research focused on personality and temperamental differences in preschool children to show how individual differences in these variables contribute to children's likeability among their peers in the class room. For her dissertation she would like to study personality dimensions in children, particularly Native Americans. She co-wrote three articles in 1998 including, "The development of display rule knowledge: Linkages with family expressiveness and social competence" by Carlson-Jones, D. and Bowling, B., Child Development, (Vol. 69, p. 1209-22).

* Jennifer Richeson, who received her MA from Harvard University in 1997 and began her third year of doctoral studies there in social psychology this fall. Her dissertation, "Effects of status reversals in dyadic interactions: From both tiers of the hierarchy," investigates how members of stigmatized and nonstigmatized socio-cultural groups (e.g., African-Americans and whites, respectively) interact with one another given different situational roles for the interaction (e.g., superior, subordinate or equals).

* Rosemarie Roberts, who received her BA from Hunter College and began her fifth year of graduate studies in social and personality psychology at City University of New York this fall. Her master's thesis focused on the Orisha community in New York, a spiritual community established by African slaves. She wanted to observe the intra-group dynamics of a moral community where concerns with justice and morality govern conduct. In particular she wanted to see how a self-consciously heterogeneous community sustains through conflicts and difference.

* Ayanna Thomas, who received her BA from Wesleyan University in 1996 and began her fourth year of graduate studies in cognitive psychology at the University of Washington this fall. In her research, she has studied the: 1) cross gender and cross cultural differences in the malleability of memory; 2) effects of imagination on behavior change, and how these effects are correlated with motivation; and 3) individual differences associated with the creation of false memories.

* Linda Thomas, who received her BA from Portland State University in 1996 and began her fourth year of graduate studies in experimental psychology at the University of Montana this fall. Her thesis, " Native American mother-infant interactions: A cross-cultural study of the Still-face effect," will focus on how American Indian infants learn the rules of social interaction with regard to emotion regulation and the strategies that these infants use to regulate affective states.

* Kenneth Tyler, who received his BA from the University of Illinois, Chicago, in 1997 and began his third year of studies in developmental psychology at Howard University in Washington, D.C. this fall. His research will focus on capturing the cultural socialization preferences and practices of African-American parents as well as their perception of their children's preferences and practices of specific culture culture-based socialization activities.

The two HIV/AIDS research fellows are:

* Anai Cudra, who received her BA from Florida International University in 1994 and began her fifth year of doctoral studies at George Washington University. She has a major in clinical psychology and a minor in health. Her past research focused on health prevention and coping with different chronic illness, both with adult and child minority populations. Cudra's doctoral dissertation will concentrate on the psychosocial and demographic variables that may predict Hispanic adolescents returning to a health facility for HIV test results.

* Mary Hulitt, who received her MA from Temple University in 1998 and began her second year of doctoral studies in social psychology at the University of Southern California this fall. Her research focuses on the epidemiology of HIV/AIDS among African-American women. In particular, she wants to examine the effectiveness of technical media (e.g., Internet tools, CD-ROM and interactive video) that have been integrated with HIV-prevention programs for African-American women.

Jo-Anne Fournier is a project coordinator for MFP.



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