Tag Archives: funding

Meet the 2023 JSF Winners!

One of the many incredible resources provided through the American Psychological Association of Graduate Students (APAGS) Science Committee is access to funding to support student research. Every year, the APAGS Science Committee and Psi Chi work together to provide financial support to research-oriented graduate students in psychology programs (either in their first year or first semester of their second year) through the Junior Scientist Fellowship (JSF). This year, we are proud to announce that 16 students were awarded $1,000 in grant funding to support their psychological research endeavors from a pool of 42 applicants. Below are the recipients and their research topics.

Ann Bernhardt (Texas A&M University) plans to study the impact of ADHD and anxiety on diagnostic identification and college-level performance. Ann’s research aims to reframe anxiety as a compensatory tool to help students increase their self-efficacy and college success.

Marley Billman Miller (Auburn University) aims to assess how food insecurity influences stress levels in racial/ethnic minority women in rural populations. Findings from this study may impact our understanding of populations who experience adverse health outcomes related to food insecurity.

Rachel Brough (University of Denver) strives to continue previous research on the influence of affective and motivational states on cognitive control. Specifically, Rachel plans to investigate the relationship between uncertainty and an increased need for control.

Jonathan Doriscar (Northwestern University) will investigate the factors contributing to systemic racism and prejudice reduction. Jonathan’s work aims to bridge psychological research with societal change.

Eli Halbreich (Texas Tech University) will investigate the role of companion animals as social support for LGBTQIA+ youth and young adults. Eli’s research aims to understand the relationship between companion animals, coping with stress, and physical activity.

Elizabeth Kruse (University of Rochester) plans to evaluate the degree to which people can suppress the area of the brain allocated to focus their attention. Elizabeth hopes to use this research to inform interventions for improved cognitive performance.

Brandon Martin (Kent State University aims to understand how stigma related to weight and body image in men informs our understanding of men’s health. Brandon’s research will address a gap in existing research on weight management and stigma, which has previously focused on women.

Renee McCauley (George Mason University) strives to understand how speaking with an accent impacts an applicant’s likelihood of being hired in job interviews, and how gender further informs this relationship. Renee hopes to improve our understanding of gender and accented speech as this intersection of identities has been underrepresented in the research to date.

Maggie McCracken (University of Utah) plans to further research the interaction between multisensory cues, focusing on the benefits of auditory cues when performing tasks which require the perception of distance. Maggie hopes to investigate if the presence of sound will improve the performance on distance perception tasks for people who are visually impaired.

Charlie McDonald (Binghamton University – SUNY) aims to identify the mechanism of dissociation, or the disruption of consciousness, emotions, and other cognitive functions. Charlie hopes to use virtual and augmented reality to inform the development of treatments for dissociation.

Margaret Powers (University of Louisville) aims to examine the relationship between abstract thinking skills and understanding or engaging with information about systemic racism. Margaret further aims to incorporate the results of this study into anti-racist work in explaining systemic racism to racially privileged groups.

Krutika Rathod (University of Maine) plans to continue researching the mechanisms associating substance use, specifically regarding cannabis, to socioeconomic adversity. This research will continue to advance the fund of knowledge on the social determinants of substance use in rural communities.

Joseph Slade (Oregon State University) strives to investigate the degree to which students retain information when using artificial intelligence (AI) databases, such as ChatGPT. Joseph’s study will not only focus on the depth of student engagement with course material as they use AI to complete tasks but will also investigate the impact of learning when students believe information was generated by AI versus humans.

Nikhila Udupa (Florida State University) aims to develop and validate a measure used to examine the uncontrollability of suicidal thought. Nikhila hopes to further examine the association between uncontrollability of suicidal thought and other control-related constructs.

Marie Wild (Cornell University) will examine the impact of relocating older adults to a senior living facility on their emotion regulation abilities. This research will advance our understanding of how aging impacts our emotion regulation behaviors and inform interventions aiding in the adjustment of relocation in older adults.

Alireza Zareian Jahromi (Fordham University) aims to conduct a longitudinal study to investigate the mental health outcomes of Iranian people living in the United States following sociopolitical events in Iran. This research further aims to understand the impact of emotion regulation strategies, acculturation, and perceived social support on mental health outcomes following these sociopolitical events.

Congratulations to our winners and thank you to all who participated in the 2023 JSF process! The APAGS Science committee and Psi Chi are committed to supporting research-oriented graduate students by promoting their work in psychological sciences. Participating in the JSF allows students to gain experience in grant writing, ultimately preparing them to apply for further funding and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Additional thanks to the APAGS reviewers for their time reviewing applications and providing valuable feedback to each applicant!

Posted by Sarah Kohnen, an APAGS Science Committee member and counseling psychology doctoral student at Chatham University. Feel free to reach out to Sarah with any questions you may have!

Introducing the 2022 PSRG Winners

Sponsored yearly by APAGS, all APA graduate student affiliates are eligible to apply for the  Psychological Science Research Grant (PSRG), a $1,000 grant used to fund innovative research projects conducting psychological science research studies, with additional funding reserved specifically for diversity-focused research. This year, 12 exceptional graduate student projects have been selected from the pool of highly competitive applications. Below are summaries and highlights of their awarded projects. 

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Grant-Writing 101 for Graduate Students

Mary A. Fernandes, Leslie S. Gaynor

During graduate school, many psychology graduate students will have the opportunity (and necessity) to pursue grant funding in order to support their training or thesis projects. Approaching the process of grant writing can require an immense amount of time and preparation, and it can be daunting when you are writing a grant application for the first time. Below, we have provided some basic steps to help you organize your efforts. 

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Let’s Get Funded!

This blog post is a part of the series, “CARED Perspectives,” developed by the APAGS Committee for the Advancement of Racial and Ethnic Diversity. This series will discuss current events and how these events relate to graduate students in psychology. If you are interested in contributing to the CARED Perspectives series, please contact Elizabeth Louis.

During my educational journey, I never imagined that I would be pursuing higher education as a first-generation college student. In my Haitian household, the common expected answers to questions about what I wanted to be when I grew up was the well rehearsed  response of a “doctor or lawyer.” Any other profession seemed not to exist to my Haitian parents. However, the real question that crossed my mind was,  who would be funding my education?

While I excelled in high school to attend a community college (Miami Dade College) and transferred to Georgetown University, I was blessed to receive a need-based scholarship. Yet, when graduate school rolled around, I felt even more clueless about how to fund not only my education, but also my living expenses. I took on the role of being my own personal banker, financial coach, piggy bank, and investor. There have been some noteworthy strategies that I have tried which helped me gain wisdom.  I have come up short on many opportunities because I did not fully understand the audience of selection committees, selected recommenders who were not a good match or failed to seek out answers to my questions. I have learned to reach out to my mentors and colleagues early on for feedback, research scholarships a year or a semester in advance, call scholarship committees that I was initially unsuccessful with, and use my calendar to organize deadlines. I constantly reminded myself to overcome my initial fear of applying to opportunities and let my perseverance be the recipe for success.

When thinking about scholarships, grants, and fellowships there are many opportunities for ethnic/racial graduate students…here’s the BREAK DOWN…(cues a Harlem shake).

Meet with peers, colleagues, mentors, faculty, and staff members –whether you know them or not — to inquire about opportunities in the following areas. You never know where one door will lead you. Also, be sure to follow-up on different funding sources.

  • Department and psychology program
  • School/College in which your program is within
  • Your Institution
    • Dean’s Office
    • The Graduate School
    • Office of Research and Grants
    • Graduate Assistantships
  • Other offices – E.g. International Office, Office of Institutional Diversity

Whether you attend conferences, are a student member of an APA division, or receive news from APAGS, please be diligent in creating connections and fostering relationships outside your school. Also, feel free to ask questions about funding opportunities to support your research and clinical work!

Now do not sleep on search engines like Google, as it can unlock many opportunities.

  • Google
    • American Association of University Women
    • National Science Foundation
    • Southern Regional Education Board Awards
    • Sororities/Fraternities

During my journey in graduate school, I was positioned to look beyond monetary funding but to think creatively of ways to gain priceless experiences and take more ownership of my own finances and budgeting skills.

  • Service – opportunities to serve, share your student perspectives, travel, and learn about other forms of scholarship
    • APA Memorandum of Understanding (e.g. Portugal and other countries)
    • APA Commission on Accreditation Student Member
    • APA Master’s Task Force
  • Invest in Yourself
    • Learn about budgeting and saving strategies (e.g. Qapital, Acorns, David Ramsey)
    • Find an affordable financial coach
    • Keep tabs on your loan(s) and retirement funding (Roth IRA)

I hope that these nuggets of information will help you develop strategies to fund your graduate education, expand your ways of thinking about scholarship, and provide you with support and resources. This journey toward financial stability will have its challenges, yet can be extremely rewarding. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or other resources that I have not listed here.

Also, click here for a listing of additional funding opportunities that will be added on the APAGS CARED website. Wishing you all the best…kenbe la (hold on and press on)!

Elizabeth Louis, PhD

APAGS Funds Five Programmatic Grants to Boost Recruitment and Retention of Diverse Doctoral Students in Psychology

At the end of 2018, the APAGS Committee invested in a brand new award program to support institutional recruitment and retention of diverse doctoral students in psychology and closely related programs by engaging current graduate students in such efforts.  The number of applications received for the “APAGS Student Diversity Initiative Award” surpassed expectations and made this APAGS award highly competitive. A team of committee members awarded five institutions approximately $3,000 each to help them implement new initiatives or support existing programs, committees, and resources. APAGS defined diversity to include identification by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, ability/disability, religion, language, socioeconomic status, and age.

The following five winners are to be congratulated for their efforts and wished every success as they move forward on proposed initiatives:

Authors from Emory University School of Medicine proposed a training and mentoring program for students of color pursuing graduate education in psychology. The funding will support a weekend workshop for undergraduate students of color interested in pursuing a career in psychology, materials for attendees, and follow-up evaluation of the program’s success. Faculty from across Atlanta will provide training to attendees on the graduate school application process and pertinent issues of discrimination and social justice, and attendees will be paired with graduate student mentors.

Old Dominion University and the Virginia Consortium Program in Clinical Psychology, through the ODU Research Foundation, secured funds to repeat and expand a successful workshop to assist local minority students in developing and preparing a successful application to graduate programs in clinical psychology. Funding would support the workshop by providing attendees with transportation to and dinner at the workshop, GRE preparation materials, and other resources.

University of Houston’s School Psychology Program proposed an immersion program to cultivate culturally responsive service. Funding will go to students who identify as culturally and linguistically diverse to support their participation in training experiences associated with the multilingual training track, specifically an immersion trip to Mexico. This program has the potential to help the program’s reputation for its emphasis in supporting school psychology trainees who are fluent in languages other than English.

University of Massachusetts Boston’s Clinical Psychology Program secured funding for a Student Diversity Coordinator, a current graduate student who will be hired to update recruitment materials (including brochures and digital narratives), serve as a consultant to faculty members looking to share external funding opportunities with admitted students, and coordinate a greatly expanded peer mentoring program to ensure the successful transition into and through doctoral study.

Virginia Commonwealth University’s Clinical Psychology Program secured funds to support various purposes aimed at recruitment and retention, including: An informal meeting between applicants and doctoral students from diverse backgrounds during admission interviews; providing applicants from diverse backgrounds with travel funds to facilitate their participation in this informal meeting; forming a group to foster the professional development and social support of underrepresented students; and bringing in a speaker to address the intersection of clinical work, cultural humility, and social justice to improve the inclusion of diverse perspectives in clinical training.

The APAGS Committee hopes to issue similar awards in future years.