Gevirtz Graduate School of Education doctoral student Amy Barrett is this year’s winner of the Gale and Richard Morrison Fellowship. The Morrison Fellowship is awarded from an endowed fund to recruit top applicants to the Gevirtz School to pursue a PhD or support deserving students who have advanced to PhD candidacy and are working on their dissertations. Recipients must be admitted into a PhD program in the GGSE and have demonstrated academic excellence in current or previous academic endeavors.
Gale Morrison is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology, where she worked from 1980 to 2014. She is also Acting Dean Emeritus January-August 2005 and January-August 2013.
Dr. Morrison also served as Dean, Graduate Division. She taught and mentored graduate students in a National Association of School Psychologists-approved school psychology credential program and an American Psychological Association-approved Counseling/Clinical/School Psychology Program. During her career at UCSB, she served as Chair of the Graduate Council, Director of the Research Office in the Graduate School of Education, President of School Psychology Educators of California, and Newsletter editor for the American Educational Research Association Division of Counseling and Development, among other appointments. UC Riverside Alumni Association honored her with a Public Service Award in 1998.
Amy Barrett is a doctoral student with an emphasis in Clinical Psychology under Dr. Ty Vernon. She received her B.A. in Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin in 2012, where she gained experience in both developmental and clinical research. Following her undergraduate work, she spent two years as Manager of the Child Developmental Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University and a behavioral therapist to children on the Autism Spectrum in home, school, and community settings. Her current research interests include neurological reward processing of language and expressive language development in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Her clinical work entails assessment/diagnosing for the Koegel Autism Center Assessment Clinic as well as providing PRT therapy to clients diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder.