Shelly, from Dayton, OH, is part of the Young Scholars Program (YSP) here at Ohio State. YSP inducted her in 6^th grade and she has been a buckeye ever since. Psychology was an easy choice for her major because it combined her passions for mental health, learning about individual differences and human behavior with the ability to gain transferable skills for a variety of professions.

Some of Shelly’s most impactful experiences at Ohio State were completing an internship with Youth Villages and studying abroad in Zambia. At Youth Villages, she worked with teenage girls who were living in a lockdown facility: “This was a very hands-on internship where I spent majority of my day in a milieu working with the young ladies. This experience showed me the importance of building rapport and becoming a positive influence and mentor to young girls who need it. Seeing the changes over the course of the summer was such a rewarding experience.”  In Zambia, Shelly had the opportunity to connect with the culture in a very hands-on, multifaceted way. She spoke with students, professors, tour guides, and local citizens and felt she was able to “bridge the gap between African Americans and Africans.” Per Shelly, “I learned what it meant to be African American and what Africanisms continue in our culture and how that relates to what I learned about individual differences and human behavior.”

Shelly also stayed involved in the psychology department both through her coursework (her favorites were positive, abnormal, and counseling psychology) and through our honors organization, Psi Chi.

After graduation this May, Shelly plans to take a gap year to conduct psychological research and then apply to doctoral programs in Clinical or Counseling Psychology. She would like to focus her research interests towards depression and suicide in the African American community.

To learn more about Shelly, check out her feature in the Psychology Alumni Newsletter (p.9)