Students Honored with Prestigious CSU Pre-Doctoral Award
Elliot Summers, a senior majoring in psychology, and Raquel Moreno, a graduate student in rhetoric and composition, have been named Sally Casanova Scholars and will participate in the CSU Pre-Doctoral Program. The program provides one-on-one mentoring and unique opportunities for summer research experience, visits to doctoral-granting institutions and assistance with graduate school applications, test fees, conference costs and doctoral study opportunities.
Summers is the first CPP student to receive the Health Professions Track Award and plans to pursue a career as a clinical psychologist and researcher alleviating barriers marginalized people face in seeking mental health services. He is particularly interested in serving transgender youth and adults in a community-based clinical practice and through research.
“Trans youth are at disproportionate risk of self-injury and suicidal thoughts and behaviors,” said Summers. “In this current political climate, they are under attack just for living as their true selves.”
He credits his faculty mentors in the Department of Psychology, especially Dr. Erika DeJonghe, as inspirations, noting that she conducts research, teaches and practices as a licensed clinical psychologist.
Moreno plans to teach English at a four-year university or community college. Working as a teaching assistant, she said, has cemented her goal.
For Moreno, many of her inspirations were her own professors, “I realized I wanted to be a professor only after I had finished my first year in the grad program,” said Moreno, “Dr. Karen Tellez-Chaires (my mentor) and Dr. Aaron DeRosa have been a source of my inspiration, they created an environment in class that made me feel comfortable yet challenged.”