Category Archives: Graduate School

The Only Queer Latinx in Ohio: The Start to My Graduate School Experience During a Global Pandemic

This blog post is a part of the series, “So Good,” developed by the APAGS Committee for Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity. This series will discuss current events and how these events relate to LGBTQ+ graduate students in psychology. If you are interested in contributing to the “So Good” series, please contact Mallaigh McGinley (they/them).

Going into graduate school during a global pandemic was not in my plans when I was applying to programs in the fall semester of 2019; it was also not in my plans when I received an acceptance to a Ph.D. program in Counseling Psychology in February 2019. What was in my plans was the fear and process of needing to find a community of queer people of color in a new location. Surprisingly, this process was easier than expected despite being in a time where isolation is sanctioned. While this pandemic has created much uncertainty and anxiety in my life, it has also opened my eyes to the importance of community. The Latinx community I grew up with all my life prepared me to understand that community provides support and can relate to experiences I thought I was going through alone; this is what I needed as I began my journey into a new graduate program as the only queer Latinx. Over the last nine months, I have seen my grandparents lose their income source, I have moved to a different state, and I have never had more access to a supportive community than I do now. 

My birthday was the first day of quarantine in the state of Illinois back in March 2020; it was also the day I realized my maternal grandparents had lost their source of income. Ever since my grandparents moved to the United States from their hometown in Aguascalientes, Mexico, they have been working as photographers – taking photographs for baptisms, confirmations, quinceñearas, and weddings in churches in Chicago. Unfortunately, they have not been able to earn an income since the start of lockdowns. Thankfully, the Mexican community in Chicago is very community-oriented, and because my grandparents are well known with many Mexican Catholics in the area they have received a lot of support. Their connections in the community were not evident to me until I helped my grandma pick up food at a Chicago Public School food drive and we were waiting in line. During the one hour it took for us to go through the line, my grandma talked to all those around us, about how their daughter was doing, how they were dealing with lock down, and memories from Sunday church, among many other things. Even during a time of uncertainty and isolation, my grandma fostered connections to others and thrived emotionally from a social distance. In my experience, I always understood that being Mexican meant being in a tight-knit community that supported each other, but the depth of that connection did not hit me until I saw my grandmother smile through her face mask while talking to others in the line.  

I regretted not forming that kind of connection at home with others who shared that identity as I began my journey to moving away from home and my family for the first time. Moving from Chicago to Akron, Ohio was a terrifying endeavor, not only because I would be in a place I had never been to before and away from those I love, but because I did not know how much those around me would accept me. A queer Latinx is not a new concept in the middle of a big city, but was it new to a small city in the Midwest, much less my program? It has felt like it as I have looked for panaderias on Google and have only come up with the Wonder Bread factory 0.7 miles away and a Starbucks located on campus. It has felt like I was the only nonbinary individual at my university every time I have needed to correct a professor about my pronouns. I know I cannot be the only queer Latinx in Ohio, but this is how I felt as I began navigating my first semester of graduate school. I did not inherit my grandparents’ ability to find community wherever they went and this was clear with every pang of homesickness. 

My circumstances were not all that hopeless as I did have a supportive cohort and graduate program. Ever since the interview weekend, I introduced myself with they/them pronouns. While I have heard my professors slip up in using them, they continue to do better and catch themselves when they make a mistake. My cohort members have been consistent in using my pronouns, even offering to correct our professors if they use the wrong pronouns. Although these people have been the ones I interact with the most, they are not the only supportive group I have found. Surprisingly, the COVID-19 pandemic has opened many doors to me for finding my community, and it has done so virtually. Through social media, I have been able to join groups where people share my identities and share resources. One of these resources has been virtual meetups to network with others, one of which was specifically directed at transgender and nonbinary graduate students in psychology. Here, I was able to ask questions that no one in my graduate program could satisfy, such as “Should I disclose my pronouns to my students?”, “How open are you about your identity with faculty?”, and many others. There have been so many more groups I have been able to join through virtual means that have helped me to feel closer to those in my communities and my own identity, even if I am living in an unfamiliar place. 

Almost a year since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I have seen my grandmother still feel connected to her neighborhood, I have become the first in my family to move out of state and to pursue a graduate degree, and I have felt connected to my identity through the support of my cohort and from those online. Despite living through a time where isolation is expected, I have never felt more linked to others in my life. Knowing what I know now, I would advise my younger self and others that face similar challenges to find their community and supporters. While it may not look how I expected, it turned out better than I could have hoped. Going to graduate school during a global pandemic was never in my plans, but I am glad to have gone through my first semester knowing I have others I can look to for support and I am excited to continue doing so for the next five years. 

Janessa Garcia is a doctoral student in counseling psychology at the University of Akron. They received their bachelor’s degree in psychology and women’s & gender studies from Roosevelt University in Chicago. Their research interests are focused on the evolution and exacerbation of post-traumatic stress symptoms for those who experience gender-based violence. 

Let’s Get Funded!

This blog post is a part of the series, “CARED Perspectives,” developed by the APAGS Committee for the Advancement of Racial and Ethnic Diversity. This series will discuss current events and how these events relate to graduate students in psychology. If you are interested in contributing to the CARED Perspectives series, please contact Elizabeth Louis.

During my educational journey, I never imagined that I would be pursuing higher education as a first-generation college student. In my Haitian household, the common expected answers to questions about what I wanted to be when I grew up was the well rehearsed  response of a “doctor or lawyer.” Any other profession seemed not to exist to my Haitian parents. However, the real question that crossed my mind was,  who would be funding my education?

While I excelled in high school to attend a community college (Miami Dade College) and transferred to Georgetown University, I was blessed to receive a need-based scholarship. Yet, when graduate school rolled around, I felt even more clueless about how to fund not only my education, but also my living expenses. I took on the role of being my own personal banker, financial coach, piggy bank, and investor. There have been some noteworthy strategies that I have tried which helped me gain wisdom.  I have come up short on many opportunities because I did not fully understand the audience of selection committees, selected recommenders who were not a good match or failed to seek out answers to my questions. I have learned to reach out to my mentors and colleagues early on for feedback, research scholarships a year or a semester in advance, call scholarship committees that I was initially unsuccessful with, and use my calendar to organize deadlines. I constantly reminded myself to overcome my initial fear of applying to opportunities and let my perseverance be the recipe for success.

When thinking about scholarships, grants, and fellowships there are many opportunities for ethnic/racial graduate students…here’s the BREAK DOWN…(cues a Harlem shake).

Meet with peers, colleagues, mentors, faculty, and staff members –whether you know them or not — to inquire about opportunities in the following areas. You never know where one door will lead you. Also, be sure to follow-up on different funding sources.

  • Department and psychology program
  • School/College in which your program is within
  • Your Institution
    • Dean’s Office
    • The Graduate School
    • Office of Research and Grants
    • Graduate Assistantships
  • Other offices – E.g. International Office, Office of Institutional Diversity

Whether you attend conferences, are a student member of an APA division, or receive news from APAGS, please be diligent in creating connections and fostering relationships outside your school. Also, feel free to ask questions about funding opportunities to support your research and clinical work!

Now do not sleep on search engines like Google, as it can unlock many opportunities.

  • Google
    • American Association of University Women
    • National Science Foundation
    • Southern Regional Education Board Awards
    • Sororities/Fraternities

During my journey in graduate school, I was positioned to look beyond monetary funding but to think creatively of ways to gain priceless experiences and take more ownership of my own finances and budgeting skills.

  • Service – opportunities to serve, share your student perspectives, travel, and learn about other forms of scholarship
    • APA Memorandum of Understanding (e.g. Portugal and other countries)
    • APA Commission on Accreditation Student Member
    • APA Master’s Task Force
  • Invest in Yourself
    • Learn about budgeting and saving strategies (e.g. Qapital, Acorns, David Ramsey)
    • Find an affordable financial coach
    • Keep tabs on your loan(s) and retirement funding (Roth IRA)

I hope that these nuggets of information will help you develop strategies to fund your graduate education, expand your ways of thinking about scholarship, and provide you with support and resources. This journey toward financial stability will have its challenges, yet can be extremely rewarding. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or other resources that I have not listed here.

Also, click here for a listing of additional funding opportunities that will be added on the APAGS CARED website. Wishing you all the best…kenbe la (hold on and press on)!

Elizabeth Louis, PhD

Who Researches My Communities? Speaking Out About the White Academic Gaze

As a queer Vietnamese American graduate student interested in pursuing an academic career, I sometimes worry about sharing views that may challenge dominant norms and ideologies. Some established academics of color have recommended I keep my mouth closed until tenure or after tenure, whereas others have said that if I minimize my voice, I will assimilate into the system that silences more radical perspectives. Because I value social justice, I wanted to reach beyond my fear to name and confront an issue I witness in academia that I will refer to as the white academic gaze, or when white researchers conduct research on people of color, especially without including them in the research and publication process.

Tweets from user @nigreaux
These tweets exemplify the invasiveness of what I refer to as the white academic gaze.

The white academic gaze constitutes a serious issue in the field of psychological research because even though white people who conduct research on people of color may have good intentions, the act of doing so can feel extractive as well as an overreach of power. For example, years ago before I entered a PhD program, I spoke to a woman of color working as a doctoral student under a white woman in a clinical psychology program who researched Black and Latinx youths’ health outcomes. This doctoral student informed me that even though her PI published on Black and Latinx youth, she would often microaggress her own graduate students of color. I myself have witnessed white people who have published on Asian American communities who have proceeded to harm actual Asian Americans in interpersonal interactions. It saddens and angers me that white researchers can benefit from the struggles of communities of color even while hurting members of those communities.

Furthermore, even if a white researcher did not commit racist acts, their engagement with research on people of color still feels extractive. Racial inequity in psychological research persists in that while research on race is rare, even when research on race is conducted, it is often executed by white researchers. For example, I have observed white researchers win large grants to study the experiences of queer men of color. As a queer person of color myself, I first wonder if those researchers have examined their own complicity in racism, and I then wonder about all the marginalized queer researchers of color I know who struggle to enter academia or to make it in academia because they do not have the access to data necessary to publish. Given the numerous benefits of having faculty of color in university settings, I feel curious about what we can do to promote academics of color securing opportunities to conduct research on and with their own communities, so we can build a more equitable academy.

Though many perhaps consider science objective, I feel that privilege and oppression play a large part in who gets to conduct science. I will implicate myself here – for my undergraduate honors thesis, I examined the role of feminine norms on college women’s eating behaviors. Though I am in the process of exploring my gender identity now, at the time I had identified as a cisgender gay man who had always leaned into his femininity. I felt interested in examining how femininity may influence food intake, and I found the measures examining femininity within men lacking. After I graduated, I became sole author of that paper and proceeded to publish it. Looking back, I wish I had done more to include a woman on that paper, even though I had already written the entirety of the paper, such as by asking for help with the revisions. Or, I wish I had interrogated my privileges earlier on in the process and had collaborated with another woman in addition to my advisor from the beginning of the process. At the time I had identified as a cis man, so I wish I had asked myself: as someone who has benefited from male privilege, was it my place to conduct this research at all?

I will admit that as a queer graduate student of color, it does feel a bit scary to share these beliefs on a public forum. I remind myself though that I am allowed to make my voice heard and that I can thank the many writers of color who have come before me for guiding my own growth. For example, I think about Myriam Gurba, a queer Mexican American woman who courageously called out a white woman for advancing her own career through writing about Mexican people’s stories. Gurba’s intelligent, impassioned post sparked long-necessary discourse on how the publishing industry privileges white writers even when they write about communities of color. I feel that psychological research could benefit from a similar reckoning, especially given the American Psychological Association’s stated commitment to dismantling systemic racism.

As a future counseling psychologist, I firmly believe that both individual and systemic-level change are necessary. As an aspiring academic, I am committed to actually checking in with my students and asking them how they feel about my relationship with them, to mitigate the potential for harm and to practice actual accountability if I have hurt them. I will name power differentials that come from my position as an advisor as well as the power dynamics that emerge from our various privileged and marginalized social identities. I will continue to educate myself so that that burden does not fall on my students. Furthermore, I commit to knowing my own lane and supporting researchers doing research on and with their own communities, while reading more about how I can help decolonize research overall. I do hope academic journals will institute policies and practices that empower academics of color. At this point though, as a graduate student and early career researcher, I try to focus on what I can control. I do my best to take accountability for my own actions as I engage in advocacy and activism. I also remember to practice gratitude for the mentors I have had who have nurtured my passion for social justice-related research, as well as those who have nurtured my voice and my desire to speak out about injustices in the academy overall.

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Thomas Le, MS, is a doctoral candidate in Counseling Psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park. His research integrates counseling, cultural, and health psychology by focusing on how gender socialization and racism impact the development and maintenance of eating disorders and substance use in marginalized communities (e.g., Asian Americans, LGBTQ+ people of color). In their free time they enjoy laughing and processing with close friends, reading books about social justice and interpersonal relationships, and listening to Blackpink. You can contact him at tple[at]terpmail.umd.edu.

Introducing the “So Good” Series: Sharing LGBTQ+ Graduate Student Perspectives

The APAGS Committee for Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity (CSOGD) is proud to introduce a forthcoming blog series exploring the unique needs of LGBTQ+ graduate students in psychology, including experiences at the intersection of multiple minority identities. The series, titled So Good, will showcase narratives authored by winners of the first-ever APAGS-CSOGD Writing Grant. The initial inspiration for this series was based in admiration of the consistent, timely, and informative blog posts shared through the CARED Perspectives series, sponsored by the APAGS Committee for the Advancement of Racial and Ethnic Diversity. The series was also intended to build upon prior blog contributions by CSOGD under the leadership of J. Stewart to support LGBTQ+ research and psychology.

Our vision for this series was to provide a space for LGBTQ+ students to share their diverse personal and professional experiences, with the explicit intent of amplifying voices that have historically been excluded from dominant narratives of the “typical” graduate student experience. Culturally inscribed understandings of leadership traits and styles are often grounded in white dominant norms (Ospina & Foldy, 2009; Parker, 2005) and APA leadership, including graduate student leadership, tends to be predominantly white. Such representation does not reflect the increasing diversity of psychology graduate students, who embody a range of racial and ethnic minority identities (Michalski et al., 2019; Bailey, 2020), as well as sexual and gender minority identities. As such, we were determined that this project go beyond an illusion of diversity, as is often true of institutionalized projects of “multiculturalism” (Ahmed, 2006, 2012; Stewart, 2017). Thus, this series reflects nuanced depictions of students’ lived experiences, integrating rich personal narrative with exploration of unique research areas salient to the student authors. Another goal of this series was to provide students with support in navigating the authorship process. As graduate students we are aware that it can be challenging to publish in a peer-reviewed journal as an early graduate student. We hoped this series would provide students with the opportunity to engage with a formal submission and review process, including built-in editorial support, and result in an additional item for their CV.

The Current Project

This series emerged from discussions with the CSOGD 2019-2020 members as students navigated a challenging year through the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing racialized violence targeting Black folx, and the 2020 presidential election – in addition to the typical stressors of graduate school. As we planned the series, we were aware that LGBTQ+ people, especially LGBTQ+ people of color, have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, across various safety and financial concerns (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020; Katz-Wise, 2020). Given the disproportionate impact on Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) LGBTQ+ graduate students, we prioritized these narratives in our call for submissions. We therefore also felt it important to provide financial support to the student authors for their time and for sharing their stories. Obtaining funding to pay people for writing is a complicated task, particularly in a large system like APA. We were lucky enough to work with APAGS staff who supported our vision for and values underlying this project, and through their dedication and ongoing collaboration we were able to secure a small grant to award the hard work and openness of our writers.

Continue reading →

A Victory for Graduate Students! A Victory for APA!

On behalf of the American Psychological Association of Graduate Students (APAGS) Committee, I am thrilled to announce that the APA Bylaws Amendment “Voting Privileges and New Membership Category for Graduate Students” has passed, securing 68.4% of votes in favor despite the pro-con statement! As a result of this vote, APA graduate student members will soon be eligible to vote for elections for APA President-Elect and Board Members-at-Large, bylaw amendments, and apportionment ballots. This is a huge victory for graduate student members and the Association during a tumultuous year.

As APAGS, we would like to share our gratitude with student leaders who joined with us in spreading the word about this historic vote by sharing it on social media, advocating with your Divisions and State, Provincial and Territorial Psychological Associations, and encouraging your faculty, advisors, and colleagues to vote yes to enfranchise graduate students in APA. This vote could not have passed without you!

The overwhelming support and encouragement from our Association community led APAGS to bring this bylaw amendment to a vote again this year. We would like to recognize the amazing support and say a heartfelt thank you to our allies across the Association and beyond. Thank you to the APA Board of Directors, the Council Leadership Team, the Council of Representatives, numerous APA boards and committees, the APA presidential candidates, and the National Latinx Psychological Association. A special thank you to Divisions 9, 10, 15, 17, 29, 32, 35, 37, 40, 41, 44, 45, and 54 and Arizona, the District of Columbia, Maine, Missouri, Nevada, Connecticut, Oregon, and Washington SPTAs who have publicly supported this bylaw amendment! We would not be celebrating without you!

I cannot overstate the importance of this bylaw amendment and what it means for graduate students and the future of APA. This change means that we will have a more inclusive, diverse, informed, and engaged APA moving forward. Student voices are critical as we seek to prepare the discipline and profession of psychology for the future. 

Our Membership Office has advised us that creating a new membership category for students will appear on 2022 new member and renewal applications. Masters and doctoral students will need to be members for one year before receiving voting privileges as early as 2023. When this happens, students can vote in elections for APA President-Elect and Board Members-at-Large, and on bylaw amendments and apportionment ballots. 

Again, I am so pleased to share this news with you. Our enthusiasm for APA’s future is renewed and our desire to strengthen APA through our voices has increased!  Please feel free to reach out to me or our staff if you have any questions. 

Yours in solidarity,

Blanka Angyal, M.A, M.Ed., Ed.S.

2020 APAGS Chair