Northern Illinois University
Department of Psychology
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Student Perspectives

The clinical faculty strive to create an environment of support and community in the program. Hear what some of our current students sharing what they like best about the program.

Faculty

The following are the core clinical psychology faculty, who you will be working with closely. They will serve on your thesis and dissertation committees, teach the core classes you will take and be your first clinical supervisors in our in-house training clinic. 

• Michelle Lilly – Understanding the effects of interpersonal trauma and duty-related trauma on mental health (e.g., PTSD, depression, somatization); cognitive and emotion regulation processes; mindfulness (Trauma, Mental Health and Recovery Laboratory).
  • Laboratory video.
• Holly Orcutt – Post-traumatic stress disorder; traumatic stress and its consequences; sexual risk-taking behavior; experiential avoidance; forgiveness; emotion regulation; fear physiology (Research Lab for the Study of the Consequences of Trauma Exposure).
  • Laboratory video.
  • Alumni video.
  • Student video.
• Laura Pittman – Developmental psychopathology; family process; extended family; parenting and coparenting; economic and cultural diversity; children's psychological response to natural disaster (Families and Development in Context Lab).
  • Laboratory video.
• Elizabeth Shelleby (not accepting new graduate students) – Developmental psychopathology, child disruptive behavior problems, preventive interventions, parenting practices, child emotion regulation, contextual influences (e.g., poverty, parental psychopathology).
  • Video from Professor Shelleby.
  • More information can be found on Professor Shelleby's biography page.
• David Valentiner – Anxiety disorders; factors that impeded or facilitate natural recovery following trauma and during exposure-based treatments for anxiety disorders; early identification and prevention of anxiety conditions, particularly social anxiety (NIU Anxiety Disorders Research Lab).
  • Overview video from Professor Valentiner.
  • Laboratory overview video - student perspectives.
  • Video about Professor Valentiner's research.
  • Video about Professor Valentiner.
  • Interaction anxiety and interpersonal processes.
  • OCD and trauma.
  • Climate change denial.
  • Shyness conceptualization and adaptive functions of shyness.
  • Test anxiety.
• Kevin Wu – Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder; dimensional models of psychopathology; experimental psychopathology; personality; psychological assessment/measurement issues (NIU Anxiety and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders Lab).
  • Laboratory video.