06/12/2019
Congratulations to Dr. Natalie Meier-LaDuke on winning the 2019 Dissertation of the Year Award for the Professional Schools!! A Recent graduate from the Loyola School Psychology PhD program Dr. Meier-Laduke currently works for the Morton Freshman Center as the School Psychologist. Here is a little bit about her dissertation work;
The dissertation focused on...
"The purpose of the study was to examine school psychologists’ professional practice in relation to transgender youth. Natalie LaDuke explored the frequency with which school psychologists engage in the professional guidelines outlined by the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) in their position statement: "Safe Schools for Transgender and Gender Diverse Students" as well as school psychologists’ feelings of preparedness to complete these duties."
The results were...
"Natalie LaDuke found rural practitioners and school psychologists in elementary and middle schools reported feeling the least prepared to implement the NASP best practices for serving transgender students. School psychologists working in non-rural and high school settings with more training and professional experience report the strongest feelings of preparedness to support this population. Overall, Natalie LaDuke found professional experience predicted more frequent engagement with the NASP practices when compared to any of the other exposure variables examined."
She chose this topic because...
"The idea to focus my dissertation on this topic came from one of my advanced practicum experiences. I was working on a complicated evaluation case where the student identified as transgender, used they/them pronouns, and preferred a name different from the name assigned at birth. While completing the case, we ran in to a lot of issues around school policy and communicating with parents because the student's parents didn't accept or support the students' affirming pronouns or name. I really felt at a loss in knowing exactly how to best support the student while also satisfying school requirements and parental expectations. I wanted to understand how often school psychologists work with students who identify as transgender and how prepared they feel to tackle these complicated issues. I've learned a lot of us want more training and support because we know these students can benefit from our help."
My time at Loyola...
"My dissertation chair, Dr. Markeda Newell, was incredibly supportive, helped me focus my topic, and pushed me to go the extra mile when I was analyzing my results. Overall, I'm extremely grateful for my time at Loyola. From the varied advance pratica experiences I had and the support from faculty, I felt very prepared to the enter the field. I still partner and collaborate with Loyola professors in a couple of different ways as a practicing school psychologist which has allowed me to keep a hand in both research and practice. I look forward to continuing this work in to the future with Loyola."
