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Tatiana B

- Research Program Mentor

PhD at Michigan State University

Expertise

Community psychology, social policy, statistics, quantitative and qualitative research

Bio

Hello and thank you for your interest! I am a social justice researcher with over 10 years of experience in social science research. My background is in general psychological research methods and community psychology. My academic passions are in mixed research methods (quantitative and qualitative) that center community voice while also balancing rigor for science. I have projects in health services, policy research, mental health disparities, and substance use prevention. My personal interests? I love the outdoors, climbing, hiking, and making my own playlists on spotify that no one else will ever listen to. I also enjoy volunteering my time for community engagement. I hold chair positions for one organization that is focused on promoting practice-based strategies in implementation science and another organization to promote early career scholars in psychology. I am also an editorial board member for several academic journals, such as Translational Issues in Psychological Science (TPS), Implementation Research and Practice (IRP), and The Journal of Social Issues. If any of these areas interest you, I am happy to share more about those experiences.

Project ideas

Project ideas are meant to help inspire student thinking about their own project. Students are in the driver seat of their research and are free to use any or none of the ideas shared by their mentors.

Develop a protocol for your own systematic review

Systematic reviews are one form of research that can help fill a gap in what we don't know about a specific topic. Systematic reviews are like literature reviews, except much more systematic as it follows a research protocol. They are much more extensive than literature reviews because you are trying to capture every published article to fully describe your topic based on a wide breadth of evidence. What you would do is choose a topic that we don't know very much about, such as evidence based interventions in jail populations or evidence based interventions in local public health departments. I can work with you to develop a concrete topic area. Then we would work together to develop your own protocol to conduct the systematic review. These typically can lead to academic publications (I have 3 currently published). If you are interested in learning how systematic reviews work as a support team member, I also have an active protocol that we are conducting with partners at Michigan State.

Community-based research for social justice

Do you love to write about social justice? I am an experienced and well trained community psychologist. What this means is that I incorporate values of equity, social justice and diversity into several components of my research plans. We can work together to develop a research plan that embeds values of community-based participatory research to create a project that focuses on collecting community voice and perspectives, while also holding rigor in the field of social science. Projects can focus on diverse topics ranging from public health, clinical psychology, health care interventions, or anthropology. Products from this project can include Research Plans Interview protocols Survey Development Dissemination products (how you share what you've done) White papers or blogs to encourage out of box thinking

Social Network Analysis - How are people or organizations connected and why does it matter?

This project explores relationships and patterns found in relationships across individuals, groups, or organizations. If you are interested in strengthening your skills in social network analysis, we can work together to apply this method in your proposed topic. The topics can be diverse, but I hold a dataset of non profit organizations in Genessee county that describes their collaboration patterns with one another. I can support you in the analysis to find any interesting patterns and offer a publication in the form of a student blog to share what you've learned in the process. If interested in another topic, I can work with you to develop a research plan, network survey, and analysis plan. See my paper below for an idea on how social network analysis can be used in child mental health https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0190740920319927

Blog Series on Mental Health (or other social issues)

Lets work together to create a series of blogs that build your writing skills and promote the researcher within you! We can think through which key topics to focus on based on data reports and reviewing literature on current rates of conditions among a specific population of your choice. Once we finalize our topics, we would draft brief blogs that describe the current evidence, best practices for prevention, and share your own viewpoints based on what you learned. Then we can offer publication opportunities at Polygence or find other spaces to promote your work.

Coding skills

SPSS

Languages I know

Spanish

Teaching experience

I have been previously contracted as a tutor for foster care managed children between the ages of prek- k12. Here, my role was focused on creating materials to support homework completion and areas where the school indicated a need. I would travel to multiple foster care homes to provide one on one tutoring and group tutoring for larger families. I've led several educational workshops to groups of college students for leadership development, to facilitate program improvements in the College of Social Sciences, and have trained international teaching assistants at Michigan State University. I have served as a mentor through SACNAS, AGEP, and SIRC to support underrepresented students and bridge gaps in career pipelines. I currently mentor 2 student interns at my current position (1 undergraduate and 2 graduate student). Here, my role serves as a supervisor but also as a mentor to provide professional development opportunities, networking, and refining career related materials (e.g., resume, practice interviews, cover letters, etc.). I mentor 2 other students in my free time, one of whom has transitioned from a high school student to college student and successfully published 2 academic papers with me; another who has successfully published 2 blogs with me on the American Evaluation Association's blog series on Latinx Responsive Evaluation.

Credentials

Work experience

Independent (2021 - Current)
Social Research Scientist
Flint Center for Health Equity Solutions (2016 - 2019)
Doctoral Research Team Member
The Center for Implementation (2020 - 2021)
Implementation Support Consultant
Michigan State University - Accessing Community Treatments: Services and Implementation Research Lab (2017 - 2020)
Doctoral Research Team Member - project lead and support

Education

Florida International University
BA Bachelor of Arts (2012)
Psychology and Sociology
Michigan State University
MA Master of Arts (2018)
Community Psychology
Michigan State University
PhD Doctor of Philosophy (2020)
Community Psychology and Program Evaluation

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