We are excited to welcome our newest faculty member, Dr. Joshua Oltmanns, who is joining the SMU Psychology Department!  He is the director of the Personality, Mental Health and AI laboratory at SMU. To learn more about Dr. Oltmanns and his research, visit our website or his lab website.

Eli Bell & Caroline Lee

Eli and Caroline, PhD students in our program, are recipients of the Psychology Department’s Diversity Award Research Grant! We are thrilled about this achievement and are excited to hear about their future accomplishments!

Mayson, a PhD student in our program, was selected for the 2023-2024 Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship from the Moody School of Graduate and Advanced Studies! This will provide a total stipend of $25,000 over the course of the academic year to support completion of Mayson’s PhD. We are so proud of Mayson!

Caitlin Rancher, Ph.D., a former student in our program, received funding for her K award proposal: “A Brief Intervention to Enhance Supportive Parenting and Treatment Engagement Among Families Waiting for Trauma-Focused Services”. Long-term, this award will generate an effective intervention that addresses the needs of families affected by trauma, which can be scaled up to address other public health epidemics that impede supportive parenting and child development. Huge congratulations to you, Caitlin!

🎉 I’m excited to share my K99 will be funded by @NICHD_NIH! We will be looking at the best way to deliver the Project Support Positive Parenting module to families on the waitlist for trauma services. pic.twitter.com/kGdjUeNPrA

— Caitlin Rancher, PhD (@CaitlinRancher) April 13, 2023

We are so proud of our graduate student, Sierra Rufino, for winning the Dean’s Award at SMU Moody’s 2023 Research & Innovation Week Graduate Poster Session for her research in “Volitional Change in Pathological Personality: Can People Change Their Maladaptive Traits?”, co-author: Nathan Hudson. Congratulations, Sierra!

Congratulations to our graduate student Bree Geary for receiving the Society of Behavioral Medicine’s 2023 Distinguished Student Excellence in Research Award to support her dissertation testing the effects of autonomy-supportive instructions in yoga!

We are thrilled to introduce our newest faculty member, Dr. Poonam Dubal, who will be joining as the SMU Psychology Clinic Director. Dr. Dubal earned her doctorate in School Psychology from Loyola University Chicago (APA-Accredited). She completed her doctoral training at Cypress Fairbanks ISD (APA-Accredited) and postdoctoral training at Irving ISD and Momentous Institute in Dallas, Texas. To learn more about Dr. Dubal, visit our website.

Congratulations to our graduate students, Sumaiyah Syed and Julie Pham who won the PSI/APGS Junior Scientist Research Fellowship, which comes with a $1,000 stiped! The fellowship recognizes outstanding research-oriented students who are entering their first year (or first semester of second year) of graduate study to help them begin successful research programs/projects.

We are excited to welcome our newest faculty member, Dr. Sarah Kucker, who is joining SMU in January 2023! She has previously held faculty positions at Oklahoma State University and the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. To learn more about Dr. Kucker and her research, visit our website.