Team Members

Pictured from left to right: Farid Boualam (Undergraduate RA); Angela Blizzard (Undergraduate RA); Shayla Thrash (Graduate Student); Michele Crisafulli (Graduate Student); Taylor Berens (Graduate Student); Katie Wright (Graduate Student); Cate Corno (Graduate Student); Meagan Graydon (Graduate Student); Stephanie McKenney (Undergraduate RA); and Angela Petersen (Graduate Student) Not pictured: Carlo DiClemente (Director), Janine Delahanty (Research Scientist), Michael Earley (Graduate Student); Onna Van Orden (Graduate Student), Kristina Schumann (Graduate Student), Preston Greene (Graduate Student), Dana Ansari (Undergraduate RA), and Mark Jimerson (Undergraduate RA)

Director

Carlo C. DiClemente, Ph.D.

Carlo DiClemente completed his doctorate in clinical psychology at the University of Rhode Island in 1978. He joined the faculty at UMBC as Professor of Psychology and Department Chair in 1995 after several years as an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Houston and at the University of Texas Medical School and the Texas Research Institute of Mental Sciences. Dr. DiClemente's research examines the stages of the process of human intentional behavior change particularly as related to health and addictive behaviors. He is the co-developer of the Transtheoretical Model of change which has been used by researchers in the areas of cancer prevention, HIV risk reduction, dietary change, exercise, occupational safety, and rehabilitation of health and addictive behaviors. He has co-authored several books, The Transtheoretical Model and Changing for Good as well as numerous articles and book chapters. Dr. DiClemente serves as a consultant to a number of institutions and research projects and has an active grant funded program of research in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Maryland at Baltimore and at University of Maryland College Park, University of Texas Health Sciences Center, University of Houston and other institutions.

E-mail: diclemen@umbc.edu More details...

Associate Director of MDQuit

Janine Delahanty, Ph.D.

Janine Delahanty is a Research Scientist.  Dr. Delahanty is the Associate Director of the Maryland Quitting Use and Initiation of Tobacco (MDQuit) Resource Center (visit www.mdquit.org for more information) and is also the Program Evaluator of a 5 year SAMHSA / CSAT medical residency training grant for Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment.  She graduated in May of 2005 with a degree in Human Services Psychology (Behavioral Medicine Track) from UMBC.  Her interests include: substance use prevention and cessation, with an emphasis on smoking and other illicit drug use among adolescents.

E-mail: delahan1@umbc.edu

Graduate Students

Taylor Berens, B.S.

Taylor is a second year graduate student in the in the Clinical/Behavioral Medicine track of the Human Services Psychology program at UMBC. She received her B.S. in Psychology and Spanish from Virginia Tech in 2010, where she worked in the Addictions Laboratory and conducted research on the efficacy of personalized normative interventions in reducing alcohol use among heavy-drinking college students. She then worked at Virginia Commonwealth University's School of Medicine in the Office of Assessment and Evaluation Studies, where she was involved in program and curriculum evaluation, assessment studies, and research design in the medical school. At UMBC, Taylor is interested in how various biopsychosocial factors and intervention approaches influence changes in addictive behaviors. Her master's thesis research concerns the roles of self-efficacy and change processes in predicting drinnking behaviors after alcohol treatment. She works on the MD3 (Maryland MDs Making a Difference) project, where she is particularly involved in the development and implementation of a coding tool to evaluate the fidelity of the SBIRT protocol.

E-mail: tberens1@umbc.edu

Catherine Corno, B.A.

Cate is a first year graduate student in the Clinical/Community-Applied Social Psychology track of the Human Services Psychology doctoral program at UMBC.  She received her B.A. in Psychology from Georgetown University in 2008, where she conducted research on Alzheimer’s disease and the coping process of those caring for Alzheimer’s sufferers.  She then worked at Brown University’s Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies on brief motivational interventions for non-college attending young adults’ heavy alcohol use and adults’ heavy alcohol use and related sexual risk behaviors.  Currently, Cate works as a graduate assistant for the HIV/AIDS Center for Community Collaboration and the MDQuit Resource Center.  She is interested in studying the processes of change for heavy substance use and related risk behaviors among at-risk community samples and best practices for outreach.

E-mail: ccorno1@umbc.edu

Michele Crisafulli, M.A.

Michele is a second year graduate student in the Clinical Psychology/Community and Applied Social Psychology track of the Human Services Psychology doctoral program at UMBC. She received a Bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2007 and a Master's degree in psychology from Boston University in 2008. While at UNC and BU, Michele studied eating disorders, with a particular emphasis on understanding the stigma associated with them. From 2009 to 2011, Michele worked as a research assistant in the Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse at McLean Hospital. Currently, Michele works as a graduate assistant for the Prevention Research Institute. She is especially interested in the prevention of substance abuse and co-occurring disorders, as well as the promotion of positive health behaviors.

E-mail: mcris1@umbc.edu

Michael Earley, M.Ed.

Michael is a fifth year graduate student in the Human Services Psychology Program at UMBC. Michael received his B.A. in English from the University of Notre Dame in 2000 and completed his M.Ed. in 2002. Michael returned to graduate school after five years of high school teaching and three years of work in addiction, anxiety, and mood disorder research. Michael's research and clinical efforts are focused on better understanding the role that empathic attentive listening plays in engaging the processes of change within motivational interveiwing and other client centered modalities.

E-mail: earley1@umbc.edu

Meagan Graydon, B.A.

Meagan is a first year graduate student in the Clinical Psychology track of the Human Services Psychology doctoral program at UMBC. She received her B.A. in Psychology from the University of Virginia in 2010 where she worked at the Center for Addiction Research and Education investigating the pharmaceutical interventions on cravings for both alcohol and cocaine users. In the two years before graduate school she worked at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center conducting triage assessments for behavioral health services in an integrated primary care mental health setting. At UMBC she is interested in interventions for substance use and co-occurring disorders, particularly PTSD. Meagan is currently working on the No Wrong Door project as part of the Center for Community Collaboration (CCC).

E-mail: mgraydo1@umbc.edu

Preston Greene, M.A.

Preston is a seventh year graduate student in the Clinical/Behavioral Medicine track of the Human Services Psychology program at UMBC. He received his B.S. in Psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2005. His Master's thesis utilized Latent Growth Modeling (LGM) to examine within treatment changes in drinking, self-efficacy, and use of the processes of change using Project MATCH data. Preston's dissertation, "How and When Implicit Attitudes About Smoking Affect Decision Making in the Personal Process of Smoking Cessation," integrates implicit cognition and behavioral economics perspectives on substance use with the personal change process of the Transtheoretical Model. He currently works as a research specialist at the University of Maryland Systems Evaluation Center, part of the Division of Services Research within the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

E-mail: greenep1@umbc.edu

Angela Petersen, B.A.

Angela is a fourth year graduate student in the Clinical/Behavioral Medicine track of the Human Services Psychology program at UMBC. She received a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Montana in 2007 where she participated in research focused on etiology of substance use disorders, substance abuse in sexual minority groups, and co-occurring disorders. She is currently working as a resource center specialist at the Maryland Resource Center for Quitting Use & Initiation of Tobacco (MDQuit). Angela is interested in extending our understanding of how TTM constructs, psychological distress, and smoking are related in populations with co-occurring disorders. She is also interested in how treatment variables such as the therapeutic alliance affect treatment outcomes for behavioral health populations.

E-mail: angel13@umbc.edu

Kristina Schumann, M.A.

Kris is a sixth year graduate student in the Clinical/Behavioral Medicine track of the Human Services Psychology program at UMBC. She received a Bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Connecticut in 2002 and a Master's degree in psychology from American University in 2006. In the HABITS lab, Kris coordinated Project ACTION; a project exploring personal change mechanisms in modifying drinking behavior. While at UMBC, Kris worked as a lifestyle interventionist on a research study at Johns Hopkins called Project DECIDE, which is a problem-solving training intervention for African Americans with type 2 diabetes aimed at improving glycemic control and cardiovascular health. She recently defended her dissertation, entitled: Diabetes Self-Efficacy Survey: Measure development and implications for self-management of type 2 diabetes. Kris is currently completing her clinical internship in the Health Psychology track at the Connecticut VA Healthcare System - West Haven campus.

E-mail:kschu1@umbc.edu

Shayla Thrash, B.S.

Shayla is a third year graduate student in the in the Clinical/Behavioral Medicine track of the Human Services Psychology program at UMBC. She received her B.S. in Psychology from Michigan State University in 2010, where she conducted research on motivation to change health behaviors among college students (specifically, smoking cessation and dietary change). Shayla is interested in studying health behavior change as it pertains to addictive behaviors, obesity, and eating disorders.

Email: sthrash1@umbc.edu

Onna Van Orden, M.A.

Onna is a seventh year graduate student in the Clinical Psychology/Behavioral Medicine track of the Human Services Psychology doctoral program at UMBC. She received a Bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of South Florida in 2005. During her time as a graduate assistant in the HABITS Lab, Onna helped coordinate programming in both the HIV/AIDS Center for Community Collaboration project funded by the Maryland Infectious Diseases and Environmental Health Administration and the MDQuit Resource Center funded by DHMH. Her master's thesis research concerned differences between daily and nondaily smoking college students on variables associated with the Transtheoretical Model of Intentional Behavior Change. Her dissertation research focuses on event-level factors and processes of change related to alcohol abuse and risky sexual behavior among HIV+ men who have sex with men in the Positive Choices study (NIAAA Grant R01 AA11808: Jeffrey T. Parsons, principal investigator; Joseph P. Carbonari, co-principal investigator). She is currently on clinical internship at the VAMHCS-UMB Psychology Internship Consortium at the Baltimore VA Medical Center.

E-mail: onnav1@umbc.edu

Katherine Wright, B.A.

Katie is a fifth year graduate student in the Clinical/Behavioral Medicine track of the Human Services Psychology program at UMBC. She received a Bachelor's degree in Neuroscience from Middlebury College in 2004. In the four years before graduate school, she studied the neural correlates of learning, memory, and emotion in animal models at a neuropsychology lab in the NIMH and later, worked in schizophrenia and addiction research, coordinating collaborative projects between the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center and NIDA. Now she works as a graduate research assistant on the Maryland M.D.s Making a Difference (MD3) project. She is interested in studying how TTM constructs interact with facets of personality and self-control to predict behavior change and substance use treatment outcomes.

E-mail: wright6@umbc.edu 

For information about HABITS Dissertations and Theses, please click here.