Faculty Mentors - 2021 Applications

Each first-year graduate student is matched with a clinical faculty member who will serve as an advisor and research mentor during the initial years of the program. The faculty mentor will work closely with the student to develop and guide research projects.

To facilitate this pairing, we strongly recommend that each applicant select one or two core faculty in the Clinical Psychology Program, based on shared research and clinical interests, and describe in the application why they would like to be part of these research teams.

Although a close fit between student and faculty interests is not always possible, given the focus of the program and the number of core faculty, all faculty have experience working with students whose interests may not specifically align with theirs. In these instances, the faculty strive to support students in developing an excellent program of learning. Below is a list of the core faculty members who will accept one or more new students for Fall 2021 admissions:

Carolyn A. Corbett, Ph.D., Professor

Dr. Corbett’s current research interests are in the areas of mental health issues of minority deaf individuals, ethical issues important when conducting research in small communities, and psychological stress in sign language interpreters.

Dr. Corbett’s research team has projects including:

• High-risk behaviors in deaf adolescents
• Emotional experiences of deaf college students
• Psychological stress in sign language interpreters
• Resiliency in deaf trauma survivors.

Lori Day, Ph.D., Associate Professor

Dr. Day’s current research interests include: adaption of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) to make it accessible for deaf individuals, adaptations of psychological measures for deaf individuals, and removing biases in training for graduate students from diverse backgrounds.

Students on Dr. Day’s research team have recently completed or are in the process of developing their projects on the following topics:

• Adaptation of PCIT for deaf families
• Applications of PCIT for signing children and parents
• Use of WISC-V with deaf children
• Emotional regulation and communication in deaf families

Cara Miller, Ph.D., Assistant Professor

Dr. Miller joined the core faculty in Fall 2018. Her research interests include trauma and post-traumatic growth; grief/bereavement; applications of research and science on the psychology of human-animal interaction; gender and sexuality; disability and psychosocial identity; and social and multicultural psychology.

Lawrence Pick, Ph.D., ABPP, Professor & Director of Clinical Training

Dr. Pick’s research and clinical interests include neuropsychological syndromes and disorders experienced by deaf, hard of hearing, and DeafBlind individuals across the lifespan; the development and adaptation of assessment tools for culturally and linguistically diverse people; anxiety disorders; and trauma.

Dr. Pick’s research team has projects including:

• Development of a measure of acculturation stress for use with deaf and hard of hearing adults.
• Prevalence of psychopathology and suicide risk among deaf, hard of hearing and deafblind college students
• Development of a childhood trauma ASL screening measure for use with deaf, hard of hearing and deafblind adults
• Sexual assault experiences, and disclosure behaviors among deaf and hard of hearing women, men, and refugees (qualitative and quantitative approaches)
• Behavioral health technology and applications

Kathryn Wagner, Ph.D., Assistant Professor

Dr. Wagner joined the core faculty in Fall 2019. Her current research interests include:

• Qualitative research on the lived experience of deaf, hard of hearing, and blind psychotherapists
• Accessibility and interviewing practices within qualitative research
• The that LGBTQ+ people face when trying to access healthcare resources, especially transgender people of color or those who identify as having a disability or deaf/hard of hearing
• Transference and countertransference issues that arise in supervision when one member of the dyad is deaf and one is hearing