Our Growing Research Team

Welcome everyone! The start of a new fall semester has also brought to the research a whole new talented group of individuals to the research team.  

Lynsey Weston is a third year doctoral student in the School Psychology program at UMCP. She received her B.A. in Psychology and English from Georgetown University in 2008, and previously worked in sales and marketing for a textbook publishing company. As a member of Dr. Colleen O’Neal’s Emotions, Equity, and Education research lab, Lynsey does research on how motivation, engagement, and perseverance can support academic success among economically disadvantaged students. As a school psychologist, Lynsey hopes to work with teachers, parents and students to improve the mental health, emotional well-being, and academic achievement of students suffering from poverty, trauma, and other obstacles to success.

Molly Morin is a first year doctoral student in the Student Affairs Program. She received a B.A. in Elementary Education and Sociology from the University of La Verne in 2008 and a M.Ed. in College Student Personnel from the University of Maryland College Park in 2010. She is from Southern California and most recently worked at Chapman University as an Academic Advisor and Program Director for their First-Generation College Student Support Program, the Promising Futures Program that she developed at Chapman. Her research interests currently include college access and retention for underrepresented students especially first-generation, Latina/o, and low-income students and factors contributing to their academic success. She is excited to join the research team and will be supporting the qualitative components of the study.

Annie Marie Goldthrite is currently a first year graduate student in the School Psychology program. She received a B.S. in Human Development from Cornell University in May 2014 and is interested in youth academic success, minority mental health, and at-risk youth development. She looks forward to helping with all steps of the research process (especially data analysis!) She's excited to be a part of the team and is looking forward to using this research to inform her practice as a future school psychologist. 

With this collective talent we hope to outreach and recruit more participants, analyze more quantitative surveys, and conduct and analyze more interviews. 
Amy Fuhrmann, M.S. is a Doctoral Student in the Counseling Psychology Department at the Univesity of Maryland. She is dedicated to research and practice that promotes psychological and physical well-being, especially among populations with invisible identities, such as those with health challenges. She aims to conduct research that informs intervention directly through the experiences of participants, thereby developing culturally sensitive and reality-based conclusions to inform theory, further research, and practice.