Kelly Whaling of the Department of Counseling, Clinical, & School Psychology has been awarded a 2020 Dean’s Graduate Mentoring Award from UC Santa Barbara’s Graduate Division for distinguishing herself as a mentor of undergraduates.
Whaling, a doctoral student with an emphasis in Counseling Psychology, who has already successfully defended her dissertation and is about to begin an internship at St. John’s University, worked as a Graduate Student Researcher. She has managed and mentored undergraduate teams working on Dr. Jill Sharkey’s projects. She has also organized trainings for undergraduates on topics such as scientific literacy, qualitative focus groups, and technical research skills. Additionally, she has taught undergraduates about researching writing and dissemination. For example, she recruited and trained two undergraduate teams that created abstracts for American Psychological Association (APA) poster submissions; the projects were accepted and the undergraduates will present at a virtual APA conference this summer. Whaling is now leading a team of undergraduates who are contributing to a peer-reviewed manuscript submission.
“Her objective is … to help me flourish and develop proficiency in different types of work so that I am the most well-rounded researcher I can be,” a student recommender wrote. “Kelly has made it clear she loves mentoring undergraduates, emboldening us to grow and develop — not only as researchers, but as people.”
A faculty recommender noted that many of the students Whaling has mentored have continued on to graduate school and post-baccalaureate internships. Whaling helps undergraduates with their applications, writes letters of recommendations, and organizes and participates in panels about grad school experiences.
Whaling was praised by a recommender for going “above and beyond” in providing “undergraduate-focused, multi-faceted, life-changing mentorship.”
Whaling’s research interests include effective strengths-based prevention and intervention programs for ethnic minority youth experiencing suicidality, especially in unique justice-involved youth populations (e.g. commercially sexually exploited children (CSEC), transitional age youth (TAY), and gang-affiliated youth). Using a social justice framework, she examines issues pertaining to the mental health of Latin@ youth, specifically access to mental health care and community outreach/interventions for Latin American immigrant youth who have experienced trauma, depression, and/or suicidality. She is working with Dr. Sharkey to explore the effectiveness of mindfulness-based activities, which are easily accessible to underserved communities because they can be carried out by lay individuals and youth themselves, with the goal of improving trauma symptoms and other outcomes for CSEC, a group of youth who are predominantly multiracial and LGBT.