Future Clinical Psychologist and Health Disparities Researcher, Anna-Michelle McSorley
Congratulations to Anna-Michelle McSorley!
Anna-Michelle is this year’s Outstanding Student in the Department of Psychology.
Her most inspirational mentor is Dr. Vanessa Malcarne, who has been her MBRS mentor since she transferred to SDSU from San Diego City College, summer of 2010.
As a SDSU IMSD scholar, she is an active member of the Community Outreach Research Team at The Rebecca and John Moores UCSD Cancer Center. Additionally, she works as a Research Assistant at the San Diego State University Chronic Illness Laboratory. Working under the direction of her MBRS IMSD faculty mentor, Dr. Vanessa L. Malcarne, she participates on projects investigating health disparities in disadvantaged and underrepresented populations. Anna-Michelle contributes to various partnership projects between San Diego State University and University of California, San Diego, including the Breast Cancer Clinical Trial Education Program funded by the California Breast Cancer Research Program. This program aims to educate Hispanic and African-American women about clinical trials and emphasizes the importance of minority participation. She has presented her research at various international – and student – conferences. Her first research project, entitled “Parental Influence on Health Locus of Control Beliefs in Children” was presented at the 2011 Western Psychological Association conference in Los Angeles. Most recently, Anna-Michelle presented a poster entitled “Daily and Weekly Measures of Fatigue in African American Cancer Survivors” at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Education, as well as a poster entitled “U.S. and Community Subjective Social Status in Hispanic Americans at the 2012 Society for Behavioral Medicine Conference (SBM). This spring she interviewed at the following Clinical Psychology Ph.D. programs: 1) University of North Texas, 2) Arizona State University (ASU), 3) Virginia Commonwealth University, 4) Auburn University, 5) University of Alabama at Birmingham, and was given an offer to attend the University of Rhode Island, Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program, Fall 2012.
Anna-Michelle’s passion is Health Disparities research and conducting outreach to mentor and serve students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
She developed a mentoring program at SDSU called the Psychology MORE (Mentoring Outreach and Education) program, which mentors community college students and SDSU students interested in the psychology fields.
Anna-Michelle will be recognized at this year’s psychology senior graduation reception.
Congratulations to Anna-Michelle on this outstanding achievement and we look forward to learning about her doctoral research at the University of Rhode Island.
Special thanks to the NIH-NIGMS for funding her research and to Dr. Malcarne for her mentorship and support.