Julie Ann Allender makes psychology her legacy
Julie Ann Allender, EdD, a psychologist in private practice in Pennsylvania, has never been afraid to learn and to teach "what is not the norm."
Allender earned her EdD at Temple University, where she learned about humanistic psychology. After completing her doctorate and working several years as an adjunct professor, psychologist Ed Daniels offered Allender an internship performing psychological evaluations. This opportunity opened a future for Allender where she no longer needed to work as an adjunct professor. She could create her own business and be the psychologist she wanted to be.
Now Allender runs her own clinical practice.
"What matters most to me is that I continue to be able to teach those who struggle to change that 'no mountain is too high to climb,' which is my motto." She uses many versatile techniques to help her clients achieve change in their lives.
Her legacy in psychology will continue with a bequest to APF. Her generosity will allow future generations to address critical issues and bring about positive change in our world.
For more information on making a gift to APF, visit APFopens in new window or call (202) 336-5843.
APF's Scott and Paul Pearsall Scholarship goes to Margaret Cadden to study MS stigma
People who are diagnosed with multiple sclerosis face more than the physical challenges. They also experience the mental health challenge of being seen differently by others, which can lead to anxiety and depression. In fact, 50 percent of people with MS develop depression — one of the many reasons research in the area of stigma and MS is so sorely needed.
APF has awarded Margaret Cadden, a clinical psychology PhD student at the Pennsylvania State University, the $10,000 APF Scott and Paul Pearsall Scholarship to conduct her study: "Judgment Hurts: The Physical and Psychological Consequences of Experiencing Stigma in MS." Cadden aims to clarify the relationship between stigma and depression in a sample of people with varying degrees of physical disability due to multiple sclerosis. She will also test if stigma directly influences the participants' disease progression over one year, and if depression plays a part in the disease course.
The Scott and Paul Pearsall Scholarship supports graduate work that seeks to increase the public's understanding of the psychological pain and stigma experienced by adults living with physical disabilities, such as cerebral palsy. For more information on the Pearsall Scholarship, please visit APFopens in new window funding.
Grantee Spotlight: Uncovering why gifted students lag in improving reading skills
Typically, when gifted or high-achieving students make smaller academic gains than their peers, educational researchers are quick to blame measurement issues such as regression to the mean or ceiling effects. In 2010, graduate student Karen E. Rambo Hernandez received the $25,000 Esther Katz Rosen Fellowship to determine whether measurement error could truly explain the lower trajectories of high achievers. By contrasting students' summer reading growth rates to the school year growth rates, she was able to estimate how much of an impact school curricula have on students.
As Rambo Hernandez hypothesized, average students' reading skills grew steeply during the school year but plateaued over the summer. By contrast, initially high-achieving students' reading skills grew more slowly than average students during school, but they maintained their rate of growth in the summer. This pattern indicates a problem with instruction or curriculum, not measurement error.
Rambo Hernandez's work illustrated just how little, on average, these initially high-achieving students were benefiting from their time in school — a finding that suggests these students (who are likely labeled gifted) are actually an underserved subgroup in need of intervention. By identifying these students as an underserved population, Rambo Hernandez hopes to be able to open avenues for more research focused on meeting the needs of this under-challenged group of students. Her findings, she says, have forced researchers to address the larger problem — that gifted students are not being academically challenged in grade-level classrooms. Other options should be considered, such as academic acceleration, curriculum compacting and early entrance to school and college.
Rambo Hernandez says the fellowship furthered her career in other ways, as well. "This fellowship made me attractive to research-intensive universities, partly because it demonstrated that my research line was fundable and that I had the ability to analyze large datasets to address practical questions," she says. "I was also able to turn this work into two publications. This grant helped to establish me as an independent researcher in my field."
