Profile

Three years ago, Theresa M. Schmitz left Pittsburgh and a management career to begin a Ph.D. program in clinical psychology at UMBC and has never looked back.

Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Schmitz graduated from Penn State with a B.S. in Psychology and worked in the field of developmental disability, helping the disabled with job and skills training. A few years later, after moving to a high management position, she decided she wanted something more.

"And I couldn't do it with a B.A.," she says.

In Pittsburgh, Schmitz found plenty of medical research oportunities but nothing in social research, so she began a search for Ph.D. programs which led her to Dr. Stanley Feldstein, a professor in UMBC's clinical psychology track of the human services program. After speaking with Dr. Feldstein via email, something clicked.

"Our research interests matched; I got to be involved in the design process," she says. "Everyplace else you go, you have to jump in and find your niche, but at UMBC I got to develop my own."

For students in the clinical psychology department, the focus is divided evenly between training and research, combining clinical psychology and social research in the field. After one year, students begin outside placements, where they put skills from classroom instruction to use in a real world environment.

Schmitz's first research endeavor was working with schizophrenic patients studying speech patterns. "The analysis looks at the sounds, silences, interruptions... whereas most other research focuses on word choice, tone of voice, amplitude," she says of the study. "Surprisingly, most schizophrenics can communicate ideas really well, but not in the traditional way."

Schmitz is currently in the completion process of this project and already beginning two studies focused on communication between couples, one of which will become her Ph.D. dissertation.

"One possibility for my dissertation is determining the predictors of the longevity of romantic relationships," she says. "What things play into whether a couple will break up or stay together over a period of one to two years."

The second option she calls a "step-family" project, where couples with adolescent step children are observed during family interactions to see how speech samples differ between various levels of functional or dysfunctional family relationships. She is currently researching both topics, aided by her faculty mentor, though her mentor is not the only one she wishes to thank.

"Dr. Stanley Feldstein helped me with the project, getting it all started, obviously one of the go-to people," she says. "Then Dr. Robert Deluty, one of my first professors, he helped with becoming comfortable and the 'starting grad school' thing. Dr. Chris Murphy, one of the Primary Investigators on the study with Daniel Black (the "step-family" project); he's facilitated my exposure in and to the couples field. And then of course, my boss, Tim Sparklin, always supportive and encouraging."

All of them were important every step of the way, she says.