Lab Member Spotlight: Stephen

How long have you been a part of the lab? 

I’ve been a part of the Impulsive-Aggression Research Team for 6 months since starting the Psy.D. program in August 2022. 

What is your favorite thing about William Paterson's Psy.D. program and working in the lab? 

The faculty all have extensive backgrounds in research, assessment, and practice that they draw on when teaching and mentoring. They bring wisdom and personal experience to their classrooms, where they share professional insights that textbooks cannot always cover. They always have a paper or an anecdote to hand that frames complex topics in ways I can understand. Overall, the faculty makes me feel more confident in myself as a psychologist in training. 

What made you choose William Paterson? 

William Paterson’s Psy.D. program is especially rigorous. The ultimate goal is still to prepare us for clinical practice, but the focus on adhering to evidence-based methods and evaluating new ideas for their empirical support was very important to me. I want to provide therapy after I graduate, but I want to do so knowing that I was trained to deliver best practices and make the best decisions for my future clients. That is why I chose William Paterson’s Psy.D. program. 

What is a fun fact about yourself? 

In the summer before my senior year of high school, I went on an exchange trip to Germany with the students from my German class. I stayed with a German family for three weeks, and we went to important German cities like Göttingen, Weimar, Berlin, and Hamburg. It was an incredible opportunity to live in a different country and speak a different language, and I’ve been eager for the chance to travel abroad again. Hopefully to Ireland.