Student Scholar Hispanic Women/Latina Award Winners

Catalina Perdomo, the 2015-16 recipient of the Student Scholar Hispanic Women/Latina Award, is a Colombian-American master’s student in the family, couple and individual psychotherapy program at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas. She is also a student in the program’s certificate in psychotherapy services for Spanish speakers. Her research interests include work with Spanish-bilingual clients and the use of language in therapy, specifically in narrative therapy.

Karina Cervantez, the 2014-2015 recipient of the Student Scholar Hispanic Women/Latina Award, is a doctoral student in the social psychology program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research interests include the political context of higher education, and the activism and political identifications of Latina students in colleges and universities. She received her BA and MA in psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Karina would like to thank her mentor Aida Hurtado, PhD, for her guidance and encouragement in engaging in interdisciplinary scholarship across the fields of psychology, ethnic studies and feminist studies.

Susana Martinez, the 2013-2014 recipient of the Student Scholar Hispanic Women/Latina Award, is a doctoral candidate in counseling psychology at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio. She is currently an intern at University of California, Santa Cruz Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) and recently accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at University of California, San Diego CAPS where she will continue her work with college students from diverse backgrounds. Her research has focused on Latinas' experiences of oppression and discrimination at the intersection of their multiple identities (gender, ethnicity, social class, etc.). She has particularly focused on issues related to sexuality as they are addressed in counseling by Latina psychotherapists. Other research interests include providing bilingual services to Spanish-speaking populations, and the integration of social justice, strength-based and feminist approaches into clinical work with underserved populations. Susana is grateful for the many Latina/Chicana feminists who have paved the way for her to pursue this ambitious goal of becoming a culturally competent Latina feminist psychologist. She is especially grateful to her mentors Carrie Castañeda-Sound, PhD, and Ezequiel Peña, PhD, for their endless support, inspiration and guidance.

Con Alma: Dialogues in Decolonizing Counseling — Reciprocal Ethnographic Explorations in Mestiza and Indigenous Spaces for Community Healing

Alicia E. Enciso is a doctoral candidate in counseling psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. Her upbringing in Nogales, Ariz., on the U.S.-Mexico Border profoundly influenced her interest in the study of cultural dimensions in the human experience. She earned a master's degree in anthropology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2000 and is interested in integrating her training in anthropology with her work in counseling psychology — particularly in exploring new ways of understanding cultural resonance in clinical work. Enciso's present research focuses on how communities of color create their own contexts for healing outside of mainstream mental health services. Her dissertation research is centered on a community organization in central Texas founded by indigenous women and mestizas to facilitate social change on many levels — spiritual, emotional, physical, mental and environmental. From a training and methodological standpoint, Enciso is interested in the utility of ethnographic research methods in creating clinical training contexts that privilege local knowledge systems. Enciso is grateful to her faculty mentors, her loving family and compañero and the inspiration of the mujeres and comadres at Alma de Mujer for their support of this work.

Resilience Factors in Latina Women Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse

Melva Torné-Boyd, a native of Panama, is a third-year doctoral student in counseling psychology at Our Lady of the Lake University (OLLU) in San Antonio, Texas. As a licensed professional counselor, she has experience working with survivors of childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault and human trafficking. She has received extensive training working with individuals, couples and families from culturally diverse and ethnic minority populations, specifically Spanish-speaking clients. She also provides live supervision and behind the mirror instruction in both Spanish and English to master's level practicum students working toward their degree in counseling psychology and marriage and family therapy. Torné-Boyd has provided training on postmodern approaches to therapy and counseling to sexual trauma survivors for clinicians in Panama and Monterrey, México. Her research interests include brief systemic approaches for the treatment of Fibromyalgia syndrome, empowering Spanish-speaking Latino families and providing services to violence survivors. Her current research includes studying resiliency factors of Latina survivors of childhood sexual abuse. She is deeply grateful to her mentor Bernadette Solórzano, PhD, and to the members of OLLU faculty for their continued support.

Development and Initial Reliability of the Guzmán Marianismo Inventory

Guzmán is a fourth-year doctoral candidate in counseling psychology at New Mexico State University. She acquired her master's in counseling and guidance from New Mexico State in 2007 and is currently on internship at the Albuquerque Veterans Health Administration Hospital. Her clinical interests include providing bilingual services to clients in rural and impoverished areas as well as working with the AI/AN community. For the past several years her research program has primarily focused on Latino gender roles and most specifically, the development and validation of a scale that more broadly measures the construct of marianismo. Her scale, the Guzmán Marianismo Inventory, was designed to measure traditional aspects of marianismo which are already well discussed in the literature, but also a new addition to the definition of marianismo: servant-leadership. Other research interests include becoming an LGBT ally, training issues for young Latina clinicians, and issues of immigration and acculturation. She would like to thank her dissertation chair Rachel Navarro, PhD, for her guidance, as well as her NLPA familia for the support and encouragement throughout the years.

Social Capital and Mental Health Among Latinas

Valencia-Garcia received her PhD in August 2010 in clinical psychology from the University of Washington. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the VA Palo Alto Healthcare System and Stanford University, School of Medicine.

For over a decade, her work has focused on understanding psychological and public health issues pertaining to women, ethnic minorities, and individuals in high-risk groups who are often marginalized (e.g., HIV/AIDS, immigrant populations, veterans). Her research has been guided by a strong commitment to understand and examine health and mental health disparities. Her work is guided by attempts to understand the various psychological, socioeconomic and cultural constructs impacting individual health, psychological well-being, and risk and protective factors among Latino populations and other ethnic minority groups. Her research interests include understanding trauma among female veterans, the function of cultural protective factors among Latino populations, and examining contextual factors leading to poor mental health outcomes and access to psychological treatment. Valencia-Garcia has co-authored two book chapters focusing on Latinas, HIV and contextual issues and has other publications and various presentations at professional conferences.

For her dissertation, she was granted a four-year National Research Service Award (NRSA, F31) from the National Institute of Mental Health to examine social capital and mental health among Latinas of Mexican ancestry.

The Design, Construction and Testing of an Instrument to Measure Latina's Health Beliefs about Breast Cancer and Screening

Gonzalez developed and tested the Latina Breast Cancer Screening (LBCS) Scale, which measures traditional cultural health beliefs that influence Latinas decision to engage in regular breast cancer screening.

Latina College Students' Sexual Health Beliefs about the Human Papillomavirus Infection.

Schiffner's research examined the sociocultural influences on health disparities and, in particular, Latina college students' beliefs about human papillomavirus (HPV).