2022 Irene E. Harms Graduate Scholarship Award Recipient Announced

We are pleased to announce the 2022 Irene E. Harms Graduate Scholarship Award recipient: Chelsea Mayo, a Clinical Psychology graduate student.

Chelsea’s primary research interest is children and adolescents at elevated risk of psychopathology due to uncontrollable environmental stressors, such as poverty and systemic discrimination and the development of interventions to reduce psychopathology for marginalized youth. Her mentor is Dr. Martha Wadsworth. After receiving her B.A. in English from Princeton University, Chelsea worked as a counselor for a non-profit organization at an economically marginalized high school in Chicago and gained research experience at Northwestern University and the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. As a graduate student, her work on the Building a Strong Identity and Coping Skills (BaSICS) project and with Parents And Children Together has enabled her to expand her skills as a translational scientist. In addition to the current award, Chelsea received the Graduate School Dean’s Distinguished Fellowship and the Child Study Center’s Robert and Ruth Faris Child Psychology Graduate Enhancement Award. Chelsea is grateful for the opportunities the Irene E. Harms Award will provide. She plans to enhance her methodological skills by attending Curran Baer Analytics courses in Applied Qualitative Research and Applied Research Design Using Mixed Methods. This coursework will better equip Chelsea to complete her dissertation, which involves extending the parent BaSICS study to investigate the relationship between flexible coping and psychopathology and flexible coping as a mechanism of intervention. She looks forward to a career in applied community-engaged research and translational science.

The Irene E. Harms Award recognizes the outstanding academic potential of students who strive for academic excellence in one or more of three areas of child psychology: translational science, community-engaged research, and outreach to communities. Translational science includes research that bridges basic science and real-world applications and includes policy research. Child Clinical and Developmental graduate students in the Department of Psychology can apply for the award, which provides $4000 to be used for a variety of research-related activities and costs for translational and/or community-engaged research, and/or for community outreach.

Please join us in congratulating Chelsea!