Metzli Augustina Lombera is a sixth-year graduate student in Penn State’s Child Clinical Psychology doctoral program. Her research broadly focuses on improving the assessment of childhood trauma. Her primary mentor is Martha E. Wadsworth, Ph.D.
Metzli’s undergraduate years were spent at the University of California Berkeley. In 2014, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology. After graduation, Metzli worked with Drs. Elissa J. Brown and Komal Sharma-Patel at St. John’s University with the Child HELP Partnership, whose mission is to better protect and heal children from trauma and its emotional impact. This experience resulted in a first-authored publication in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect. As a doctoral student at Penn State, Metzli’s research has focused on examining the measurement of child maltreatment experiences and the implications of alternative measurement strategies for associated psychological and treatment outcomes. Results from her master’s project showed that the way child maltreatment is measured impacts its relation to mental health outcomes. For her dissertation, she will expand her focus to better measurement of traumatic experiences, including trauma experienced by members of the Transgender and Gender Diverse (TGD) community. Metzli is a predoctoral fellow on Penn State’s Child Maltreatment Solutions Network T32 training grant. She received the Leadership Education to Advance Diversity (LEAD) Institute’s Fellow Award from the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology. Metzli has mentored students in the Penn State NextGen Psych Scholars Program; served as a graduate student liaison for the director of graduate studies and the clinical training committee; served on the departmental DEI Task Force; co-chaired the BRIDGE Diversity Alliance Recruitment and Retention committee; and has been active in APA Division 56 as a student membership chair and convention reviewer.
The Strumpf Scholar Award will directly support Metzli with her dissertation work by allowing dedicated time to focus on completing the qualitative portion of her project, interviews and data analysis, as well as assisting with the quantitative portion, compensating youth participants. This generous award will enable Metzli to continue her interdisciplinary research with both the psychology and education departments to further understand the impact of traumatic events on the mental health and well-being of adversity-exposed children and youth. Metzli’s long-term goal is to have an impactful career in academia producing science that improves lives.