Christina Rowley, a member of the 2019-20 Graduate Student Grant Writer’s Program and fourth-year doctoral student in the Clinical Psychology program with the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, has been awarded the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA), an Individual Predoctoral Fellowship to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research. The award, supported by NIH, is given to doctoral students who demonstrate an integrated research and clinical training plan. The fellowship is designed to assist predoctoral students to clearly enhance their potential in developing into productive, independent physician-scientists. 

Christina’s research investigates how context, such as, socioeconomic status, ethnicity/race, family dynamics, community and family support, influence families’ mental health. Her research focuses on the experience of conflict, stress, and social support in multiracial families with the goal of using these findings to inform early parenting interventions. Christina studies how these relational outcomes influence the socioemotional development of the multiracial child and to implement evidence and community-informed early interventions to improve family outcomes. Working with Dr. Maureen Perry-Jenkins on the “Work & Family Transitions Project” and a nationally-representative dataset, “Add Health”, Christina was a participant in CRF’s Graduate Student Grant Writing Program. Christina says, “I am forever grateful to the Graduate Student Grant Writing Program; specifically, CRF for providing the space and resources to have such a program for graduate students and Dr. Rebecca Spencer for her wonderful mentorship. Dr. Spencer creates a structure for writing grants, breaking down the grant writing process into achievable chunks with due dates that are scaffolded so we are able to complete and submit a complex grant with multiple rounds of feedback from peers, other CRF faculty associates, and our own advisors.”