Graduate Student Opportunities

Graduate students can gain experience in:

1. Designing research studies and writing grant proposals
2. Leading and coordinating participant recruitment and data collection
3. Training and supervising undergraduate students on assessment protocols
4. Designing, managing, and maintaining multi-method and multi-domain research databases, and developing documentations for data sharing
5. Leading and supervising undergraduate students in coding, scoring, and analyses of behavioral observational, physiology, assessment, and survey data
6. Writing and publishing research papers and presenting research at conferences
7. Co-mentoring (with PI’s) undergraduate or post-bac students on independent research projects (e.g., Honors Thesis or capstone project)
8. Developing research partnerships with community partners and leading the lab’s community outreach and engagement efforts

In addition to the generic qualities/experiences we look for in strong graduate student candidates (e.g., strong research background, research statement, letters, grades, …), there are a few additional things we look for in selecting applicants who are a good fit for our lab: 

1. Experience in working with children, adolescents, and parents: ideally in a research setting, but if not, volunteer/work experiences such as tutoring, teaching assistant in a school setting (preschool, elementary schools, after-school programs), coaching youth in extracurricular activities count as well
2. Interest and/or experience of research on culture/multicultural issues, ethnicity, socioeconomic disadvantage/poverty, or immigration/migration, bilingualism. Our current research involves Asian American and Latino American families, and families in Asia. We also welcome applicants who are interested in studying other cultural groups to join our lab to expand our research focus
3. Some coursework and research/theory background in developmental psychology, developmental psychopathology, clinical psychology, research methods, and some experience with research methods such as parent/teacher surveys, behavioral observations, classroom observations, psychophysiology (e.g., ECG, EDR, cortisol, ..), and neuropsychological/language/achievement tests of children. We welcome candidates with experience in conducting quantitative or qualitative data analyses with research data
4. Applicants who are primarily interested in intervention development or cultural adaptations of interventions are NOT a good fit as we are not focusing on this line of research at present
5. Spanish or Chinese (Mandarin/Cantonese) language skills (conversation, reading, & writing) are NOT required but a plus

M.A. thesis projects:

• Megan Chun: Relations between Parent Emotion Talk and Preschoolers’ Emotion Regulation among Low-income Chinese
• Stephanie Haft: Relations of Race-Related Stressors to Anxiety Symptoms in Chinese-Heritage College Students
• Ezra Mauer: Longitudinal Associations Between Self-Regulatory Skills and Mathematics Performance Among School-Age Children in Chinese Immigrant Families

Dissertation Projects:

• Sara Chung: Parent-child conflict in Chinese American immigrant families: A longitudinal study
  examining parental communication strategies during conflict and outcomes in adolescence
• Kaley Curtis: Prospective Relations of Childhood Parenting Styles to Adolescents’ Psychological
  Adjustment in Chinese American Immigrant Families: A Ten-Year Longitudinal Study
• Aya Williams: Parental Expressions of Love and Care among Chinese Immigrant Families