Letters From the Founding Members

Celebrating 10 Years of OPUS: A Letter From the Founding Members

As the founding Editors of OPUS, we are so pleased to see the exceptional efforts of the Applied Psychology Undergraduate Program continue to prosper. When the inaugural team came together in 2009 we aimed to foster student collaboration and create an enriching community of scholarly pursuits. We hoped to make psychology accessible to a wide range of audiences, to amplify undergraduate student perspectives in their training in the practice and application of psychology, and to bolster professional collaboration between undergraduate students and faculty mentors. These aims, of course, are continuous. Our hope for OPUS is that it will continue to represent increasingly intersectional, diverse, and global perspectives on the applications of psychology in the service of social change, to deepen friendship and fellowship amongst students, and to bolster professional development and creativity. We are proud of the OPUS team at-large for investing in this endeavor, and grateful to the faculty mentors for their steadfast support and guidance.

As the British psychoanalyst, D.W. Winnicott (1990) said, “Home is where we start from.” Indeed, APUG provided OPUS—and us—a home from which we started. We have since made our way across the globe, carrying our passion for applied psychology in tow. We are certain the OPUS staff and readership for years to come will carry on in our footsteps and create new pathways for others to follow. Read on for an update on our journeys over the past decade.

After graduation, Vanessa attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology in 2016. She is an applied developmental health psychologist with a focus on the reduction of racial/ethnic health disparities through critical psychological and social justice lenses. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Ursinus College. In August 2019, she will begin an Assistant Professorship at North Carolina State University as a member of their Applied Social and Community Psychology program.

Following completing the APUG Honors program, Jackson went on tocomplete a PhD in Clinical Psychology at the Derner Institute, Adelphi University in 2016. As a first-year doctoral student, he was selected for the Health Professions Scholarship Program and commissioned as an officer in the US Navy. He is currently stationed at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD where he serves as a staff psychologist at the Midshipmen Development Center. He also instructs a graduate course in the Department of Organizational Leadership and Learning at George Washington University, and serves as a consultant for Little Bee Books, a children’s book company based in NYC.

After APUG, Sibyl went on to pursue a graduate degree in Guidance Counseling and remained in the NYU Applied Psychology Department. During her graduate program, she worked as guidance counseling intern with high school students in the South Bronx and at an Alternate Learning Center for middle school students in East Harlem. At the same time, she worked on several research projects, both in the Applied Psychology department and at the NYU Child Study Center. After completing her graduate degree, Sibyl moved to Boston to work on research projects at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has had the pleasure and privilege of contributing to multiple longitudinal studies that have looked at multi-tiered reading interventions for students in elementary and middle school (Catalyzing Comprehension through Discussion and Debate) as well as uderstanding the long-term benefits of pre-k in BPS students (Expanding Children’s Early Learning).

OPUS founding editors at NYU Steinhardt graduation, May 2011.