The Graduate Student Association (GSA) and the Graduate College welcome the Drexel community to join us for our next Scholars Share: Conversations on Graduate Student Research to hear from current graduate students and postdocs about their research endeavors and a faculty moderator who will facilitate questions and discussion from the audience. Lunch is provided.

Tuesday, December 3, 2019
12-1PM
Graduate Student Lounge
Main Building, Lower Level, Room 010A
3141 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Download Event Flyer [PDF]

Watch the Recording [YouTube]

View Event Photos [Flickr]

Featured Speakers:

Kelsey Clark

PhD Candidate in Clinical Psychology
College of Arts and Sciences

Helping Eating Disorder Patients "Walk the Walk": Improving Skill Acquisition and Utilization in Therapy

Kelsey Clark is a third year PhD candidate in Drexel’s clinical psychology program, working under the mentorship of Adrienne Juarascio, PhD. After graduating from the University of Missouri with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, she worked as a research coordinator at the University of Kansas Center for the Advancement of Research on Eating Behaviors. Kelsey’s research interests are focused on improving treatments for eating disorders. Kelsey serves on the Academy for Eating Disorders Research-Practice Committee and advocates with the Eating Disorders Coalition and the National Eating Disorders Association. Kelsey has been awarded an Academy for Eating Disorders RSH Scholarship and The Renfrew Center Foundation David H. Barlow Award for Research Excellence. 
 
Eating disorders are associated with significant distress, quality-of-life impairment, medical complications, and mortality—among the highest mortality rates of any mental illness. However, many patients treated for eating disorders do not experience remission and symptom relapse is unfortunately common. One reason existing treatments fail is because they do not adequately improve patients’ emotion regulation and distress tolerance skills, resulting in continued disordered eating. Treatments targeting emotion-related mechanisms, such as exposure therapy and acceptance-based treatments, are well-suited to help patients acquire and utilize these skills. Kelsey will present on her experiences with clinical research, highlighting her thesis project examining exposure therapy for bulimia nervosa and other projects related to eating disorders’ emotional underpinnings. She will also discuss her clinical work and efforts to close the “research-practice gap” through clinically-informed research and advocacy.

Alisha Desai

PhD Candidate in Clinical Psychology
College of Arts and Sciences

The role of interdisciplinary collaboration in the treatment and study of substance use disorders (SUD)

Alisha Desai is a doctoral candidate in the PhD Program in Clinical Psychology (forensic concentration) at Drexel University. Alisha’s research focuses on the treatment of substance use disorders (SUD) and the intersection of SUD and the criminal justice system. Her clinical work centers on the treatment of trauma and substance use, with an emphasis on delivering evidence-based psychotherapy to diverse, underserved populations. She is currently a clinical practicum student at the Corporal Michael J. Crescenz VA Medical Center’s Opioid Treatment Program and Dr. Kirk Heilbrun’s Forensic Assessment Clinic, as well as a clinical peer supervisor at the Drexel Psychological Services Center.

Faculty Moderator:

Tsz Kwok, EdD

Associate Director, Graduate College