Alumni
Ashley Batastini
Ashley Batastini attended Drexel's MS program from 2008-2010, and worked with Professors Kirk Heilbrun and David DeMatteo. Her primary research interests are broadly in the field of forensic and correctional psychology, and specifically in offender rehabilitation, risk assessment, and juvenile justice. At Drexel, she worked on several projects, including a study investigating the impact of sex offender registration laws on juvenile delinquents and my thesis project, which compared recidivism rates of jailed inmates participating in a cognitive skills intervention. She obtained a PhD in Counseling Psychology at Texas Tech University, where her dissertation project focused on the use of videoconferencing technologies (i.e., telemedicine) in delivering psychological services to inmates across a distance. She is currently an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Southern Mississippi. Please feel free to contact her at ashbat102@gmail.com if you have any questions regarding her experiences at Drexel or the graduate school application process in general.
Jade Dinh
Jade Dinh completed her final year as an undergraduate at Drexel in 2012, completing an honors thesis in the process of earning the BS in Psychology with a minor in criminal justice. Her future plans include pursuing graduate school in a clinical and forensic psychology program, with the ultimate professional goal of working with juvenile delinquents in a clinical setting. Jade completed her last co-op at the Office of Research and Evaluation for the Philadelphia School District in which she drafted evaluation plans for the comprehensive Nutrition and Wellness Buddies Program, evaluated programs executed within the Philadelphia School District, and conducted school visits and ran focus groups to determine efficacy and fidelity of such programs. On the side, Jade has been volunteering at the Philadelphia Ronald McDonald House for the past 3 years and currently works part-time at GAP Inc. Jade's other interests include attending concerts, cooking, traveling, and leisurely reading.
Danielle Hamilton
Dani graduated from the MS program in psychology at Drexel in 2012. She received her BS in Criminal Justice and Psychology at Sam Houston State University in 2008, and her MS in Criminal Justice and Forensic Psychology from the University of New Haven in 2010. She is currently in the PsyD program at the University of Denver. Before Drexel, she worked at the Sierra Pre-trial Center and Re-interview Center where she conducted group therapy with substance dependent, HIV positive offenders with co-occurring Axis 1 diagnoses and antisocial personality disorder. Her current research interests include psychopathy, psychopathy in women, neuropsychological and forensic assessments of psychopaths and sex offenders, sex offender treatment and policy, and education and prevention of sexual violence. Dani's outside interests include traveling, Monday Night Football, playing soccer, and dancing. You can contact her at dh532@drexel.edu.
Lindsay Haston
Lindsay completed her undergraduate studies at Drexel in 2012 with a major in psychology, having conducted an honors thesis. In her time at Drexel she worked extensively at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Studies of Addiction on research projects centered around employment intervention for offenders and relapse prevention for opioid addiction using depot Naltrexone. She also interned with the Clinical Evaluation Unit of Family Court in Philadelphia as well as Juvenile Treatment Court. Her outside interests include Philadelphia sports, travel and spending time with her family.
Allison Hart
Allison Hart graduated from the JD/PhD program and completed postdoctoral fellowship at Emory School of Medicine/Grady Health System. Originally from Clearwater, FL, Allison earned a BS in Psychology from Duke University and a MS from Columbia University before moving to Philadelphia to begin the JD/PhD program. Allison's research interests include risk assessment, forensic assessment, and juvenile justice issues. Allison's thesis and dissertation research involves a resiliency-based approach and evaluates an afterschool sports mentoring program for at-risk youth. Allison currently lives and works in Atlanta with her husband, Ben, and their two children.
Heath Hodges
Heath Hodges received his BA in Psychology from the University of Arkansas in 2004 and his MS in Psychology from Drexel University in 2007. While at Drexel, his interests included violence risk assessment, psychopathy, and the role of severe mental illness in violent offending. He successfully defended and published his master’s thesis on the role of psychopathic traits in the prediction of instrumentally motivated violence that had been perpetrated by psychiatric patients living in the community. From 2007 to 2011, he assisted in clinical research for the Aaron T. Beck Psychopathology Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA. He went on to be a clinical PhD/MLS student in the Forensic Psychology Training Program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he completed the PhD and MLS degrees. He also performed psychological evaluations and mental health appraisals for a maximum-security intake facility for the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services. His current research focuses on the effectiveness of sex offender treatment programs, psychopathic personality disorder, and the impact of the law as a healing agent (i.e., therapeutic jurisprudence). He can be contacted at Heath.Hodges@gmail.com.
Stephanie Brooks Holliday
Stephanie Brooks Holliday received her doctorate in clinical psychology with a forensic concentration from Drexel University in 2013. Her graduate research focused on risk and risk/needs assessment, forensic assessment, and interventions for offenders, and her thesis and dissertation research examined the risk-need-responsivity model of correctional intervention. She completed her predoctoral internship at the Washington DC VA Medical Center and specialized in neuropsychology. She went on to a postdoctoral fellowship with the War Related Illness and Injury Study Center (WRIISC) at the Washington DC VA Medical Center. She is currently at the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California.. Stephanie is originally from Sarasota, FL, received her BS in Psychology at Duke University in 2006, and worked for a health services consulting firm before beginning the graduate program at Drexel.
Benjamin R. Locklair
Benjamin is a 2018 graduate of the JD/PhD program. He received his law degree from Drexel and passed the Pennsylvania bar exam in 2016. He is from North Carolina, where he received his BS in Psychology and his MA in Clinical Psychology from Western Carolina University. Before graduate school, Benjamin worked in non-profit community mental health and developmental disability services. His primary research interests are in the mathematical and statistical properties of forensic assessments, the practice of diversion for mentally ill and veteran criminal defendants, and the use of new technologies in psychological research. In his spare time, he is a runner, musician and general-purpose nerd. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at PMHCC in Philadelphia.
E-mail: brl36@drexel.edu
Tracy Fass McKnerney
While at Drexel, Tracy’s research interests included violence risk assessment, juvenile delinquency, and sentencing policy. Her goal was to pursue a career in academia. She is currently on the faculty in the Counseling Psychology Department, Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology. She has taught courses in psychopathology, statistics, and research methods, supervised student dissertations, and engaged in various administrative activities. She has also served as a statistics consultant for a number of research projects. Her research has included work on juvenile sentencing policy, juvenile delinquency, violence risk assessment (specifically assessment instruments), program evaluation in correctional settings, and juvenile neuropsychology. She has also been active in the American Psychology-Law Society (AP-LS), serving on several committees. She would be happy to speak with potential applicants to Drexel, her email address is tracyfass@gmail.com.
Sarah Phillips
Sarah is from Middleton, WI and a 2018 graduate of the clinical doctoral program. She graduated with honors from St. Olaf College with a BA in psychology and a concentration in neuroscience. Her research interests include offenders' perceptions of stigma and public perceptions of offenders. Sarah was involved in multiple projects during her time at Drexel. These included an empirical examination of the impact of ethical standards within the fields of law and psychology and a book chapter reviewing the literature on risk-reducing interventions for justice-involved individuals. Sarah enjoys reading, crossword puzzles and dancing. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Yale.
Email: skp68@drexel.edu
Michele Pich
Michele graduated from the MS program in 2012, having completed her BS in Psychology from Drexel in 2005. Michele’s interests in forensic psychology include (1) competence for execution, (2) forensic assessment, (3) substance abuse treatment within the criminal justice system, and (4) animal assisted therapy in the offender and terminally ill populations. She is interested in policy reform by means of empirical research. Michele has also worked as the Veterinary Grief Counselor at the Matthew J. Ryan Veterinary Hospital at the University of Pennsylvania. You can email her at mpich@vet.upenn.edu.
Liza Rubin
Liza completed an honors thesis and graduated from Drexel in 2013 with a BS in Psychology and a minor in Criminal Justice. She subsequently worked as a Legal Assistant at the Public Defender's office in the Prison Services unit. Liza completed co-ops at the Juvenile Justice Clinic at Georgetown Law Center, the Juvenile Law Center, and the Child and Youth Clinic at the University of Miami School of Law. She ultimately hopes to develop preventative programs for at-risk youth, provide counseling to youth in detention facilities, and work on Juvenile Justice policy reform.
Sanjay Shah
Sanjay graduated from the JD/PhD Program in 2013. He completed his predoctoral internship at the Emory School of Medicine/Grady Health System, and a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University where he engaged in forensic evaluations and competency restoration with the Psychiatry and Law Service at Emory. Also as a postdoctoral fellow, he completed forensic evaluations in civil areas with a private practice in Athens, Georgia. His research and practice interests include forensic mental health assessment, the cognitive functioning of justice-involved individuals, and competency restoration.
Kento Yasuhara
Kento graduated from the PhD Program in Clinical Psychology with a concentration in forensic psychology in 2012. His graduate research focused on the evaluation of an afterschool program, violence risk assessment, forensic assessment, risk-needs-recidivism model of risk management, and perception/communication of criminal risk factors. After completing a pre-doctoral internship at Patton State Hospital in California and a Postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy at the University of Virginia, he became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of New Haven. Current research includes violence risk factors, risk assessment tools, legal decision making, and forensically involved individuals with mental illness/substance abuse issues. He has served on the executive committee of the American Psychology-Law Society as the web site editor. Kento is originally from Tokyo, Japan although he has spent most of his life in the United States. He received his bachelor's degree in Psychology from Cornell University and worked as a post-baccalaureate research fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health before starting graduate school at Drexel University.
Casey LaDuke
Casey graduated from the Clinical PhD Program in 2016, with major areas of study in forensic psychology and clinical neuropsychology. He completed his psychology internship at the NYU Langone Medical Center (Adult Neuropsychology track). He is currently completing his postdoctoral fellowship in clinical neuropsychology at the University of Virginia Health System and Western State Hospital. His interests include forensic mental health assessment, the application of clinical neuropsychology and neuroscience in the forensic context, and the diversion of individuals with serious mental illness from the justice system. He is currently an assistant professor at John Jay College, CUNY.
Chris King
Chris received his BS at the University of Florida in 2008, and his JD and PhD at Drexel University in 2014 and 2016, respectively. He is a licensed attorney in Pennsylvania. Chris completed his predoctoral internship at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and started in 2016 as a tenure-track assistant professor of psychology at Montclair State University in Northern New Jersey. He currently teaches undergraduate and graduate classes in forensic psychology, and conducts research in the areas of juvenile and adult forensic and correctional psychology. Chris also works part-time as a postdoctoral psychological trainee at a private practice, where he provides supervised therapeutic and forensic psychological services. He will gladly field any questions from those interested in forensic psychology training; his email address is kingch@montclair.edu.
Jenika Hardeman
Jenika is currenty a doctoral student in Temple University’s Clinical Psychology Program. She is from Dallas, Texas, but made the move to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from Washington, DC where she had been attending Howard University. She graduated from Howard in May of 2014 with a BA in Administration of Justice and a BS in Psychology. As an undergraduate, she participated in various research projects and programs--the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program and the University of California at Irvine Historically Black Colleges and Universities Pathways Program--covering topics ranging from social psychology to developmental psychopathology. Immediately after graduating, Jenika continued on to graduate studies, joining Heilbrun’s lab and completing the Master’s of Science in Psychology program at Drexel. As a master’s level psychologist, Jenika was awarded the Services for Transition Age Youth (STAY) Fellowship by the American Psychological Association in conjunction with SAMSHA. Upon completing her Master’s degree, Jenika continued on to join the Drabick Lab at Temple University as a PhD student. She is currently studying the development, correlates, and comorbidity of emotional and behaviors problems in high-risk youth and ways to promote positive youth development. She is also interested in developing treatment and interventions that take the aforementioned aspects into account for purposes of rehabilitation. In her free time, Jenika enjoys reading novels, listening to music, exploring new things, meeting and getting to know new people, watching crime and drama television shows, and hanging out with her friends and family.