Potential Graduate Students

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Can I meet with you, even briefly? 

I recognize that applicants are often advised to connect early with potential graduate school mentors and to meet with them if possible. However, we have a general program policy that we do not conduct interviews or have individual meetings outside of the formal application process (except for applicants from our own university). There is a high volume of applications to our program (about 250 to 300 each year), and specifically to my lab (about 40 to 50), and faculty and students cannot meet individually with everyone who requests it. Also, meeting with some students but not others can provide an unfair advantage in this competitive application process for those able to meet with faculty. 

You can, of course, reach out to me by email (mlumley@wayne.edu) to tell me about yourself and your interests and even send me your CV. I welcome that and will save your information.  

If you apply to our program and are invited to interview for admission, you will have many opportunities to connect with me and other faculty member(s) of interest and their students. 

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What do you look for in a graduate student? 

There are several characteristics and experiences that that I desire in students whom I mentor, and I describe there here.

1) A strong interest in stress, trauma, and emotional conflicts causing or worsening chronic pain or other somatic / health symptoms, and an interest in emotion-focused or emotion processing therapies to address these issues.  Note that I am not particularly interested in meditation, mindfulness, acceptance therapy, exercise, nutrition, or therapies that help people cope or live with chronic illness. 

2) Substantial interest and experience in research. Successful applicants have typically worked in multiple labs during or after undergraduate years, and some have obtained a research-oriented masters degree. They have typically done an honor’s thesis or independent research project. 

3) Academic strength as reflected in high undergraduate or master’s program grades, GRE scores (if taken), and other signs of academic success.  Signs of quantitative abilities (like an A in statistics or evidence of abilities in quantitative work) are particularly valuable. 

4) Strong relational / interpersonal skills–good with people, enjoys working with others, and generally is more extraverted than introverted or anxious. I like students who also want to engage in clinical work, not just research. I and our program are scientist-practitioners.

5) A true desire to grow emotionally and interpersonally and open to getting feedback on such.

6) Willingness to work very hard during graduate school, which is a time of concentrated learning. Also, in my view, students given the privilege of getting a highly mentored PhD (so that they can become academics) as well as a clinical degree and license (so that they can become practitioners), and who have their education paid for (and receive a stipend), should work very hard in that process. 

7) Someone who brings diversity to the field; in particular, religious, racial/ethnic, and viewpoint diversity.

 

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What is your mentoring style?

I have a reputation as a very active and supportive mentor; the university has awarded me “Outstanding Graduate Mentor” awards twice, as has the Society for Health Psychology. I typically meet for 1 to 1.5 hours per week with each student individually, and then also have weekly lab meetings for all the students in the lab. I am very responsive to student needs and reply quickly, even on evenings and weekends, and I appreciate students who do the same. I do not have fantasies or expectations that my students develop a career like my own; rather, I want to help students become productive clinical psychologists in whatever career they pursue—research, teaching, academic medical center, hospital, consultation, or private practice. However, I do hope that my students will use their many abilities and their PhD to “advance knowledge and practice” at a broader level than only helping individual patients. There are many ways to do this, and part of my mentoring is to help students see how they might accomplish this in their careers and prepare them for it. 

I like to get to know my students personally as well as professionally. I see my graduate students as developing professionals and colleagues, and I supportively encourage them to “move up” the hierarchy to see me similarly. I’m on a first-name basis with them, and if they call me “Dr. Lumley” (except around patients or administrators), I’ll explore what is going on in our relationship that leads to that formality. I am rather open and disclosing and encourage the same of students. 

The therapy model that I value—and that undergirds our intervention work—focuses on helping people develop the two foundational emotional/relational needs:  connection (openness, trust, vulnerability, dependence) and agency (assertiveness, autonomy, independence). Thus, in addition to research and academic training, I want to help my students develop emotionally and interpersonally as professionals and humans along these lines. Thus, I discuss these goals with students and support—with some nudging—in their growth, which often includes becoming more assertive and sometimes becoming more open. I also value “relational” work and routinely discuss how we are relating / working together, negotiating our relationship as it evolves over the years.

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What can I expect regarding research projects? 

Generally, in their first year, they develop and propose a master’s thesis, which is usually connected with another project, such as helping a doctoral student collect data on their dissertation or working on some data from an available project. This makes for a more manageable thesis that can be finished in 2 years, rather than starting a new study from the beginning, which is often a challenging and lengthy process.  Later, for their doctoral dissertations, most students do pursue a new study (including designing, recruiting, and data collection) on a topic that fits both their interests and mine. These studies are often with clinical populations, and many of these studies have been controlled trials of brief clinical interventions, such as expressive writing or emotional disclosure, emotion-focused interviews, or short (e.g., 3 sessions) interventions. You can get a sense for dissertations that lab students have done by seeing the “Lab Alumni” page on this website. Many of these studies are also described under “Past Studies.”

Regarding research, the program and I require students to conduct only a master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation. (Students who have a completed master’s thesis from elsewhere must do an equivalent research project in their first two years). However, most students want to engage in more research, and I routinely connect them to additional projects in the lab (working with other students on their projects or with data from prior studies) or with colleagues around the university and nation or world. Currently, our students are doing extra research with colleagues at the Women’s Urology Center of Beaumont Hospital, Sleep Medicine at Henry Ford Hospital, and other psychology faculty (as their paid research assistant). 

Most of my students will first-author or co-author a few articles while in graduate school and then their doctoral dissertation (usually after they graduate). However, I do not typically publish large numbers of articles with students; although there may be some labs at other programs that support or expect students to publish 10 or 15 articles in preparation for a top-tier academic (professor) position, you should not expect this with me. I do not typically fund students with research assistantships; rather, students typically have department teaching assistantships, and coursework and clinical training are taken seriously by our program, so that students spend less time on research than is often found in clinical science programs. Most of my students will receive a 1-year research fellowship from the department/university (often taken in year 4 or 5), and students typically do get some experience writing small grant applications for both internal and external funding (e.g., Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation or the APA). However, I usually do not usually write large grants with students (e.g., federal NRSA grant applications).

Finally, I do have very nice and large lab space in the Simons Building, which is 1 block south of our main department building on Woodward Avenue. We have lab meetings there, and it is available to students, but the COVID pandemic has really changed our lives and research. Most of us do not spend much time in the lab anymore. Personally, I’m working from home several days each week and on campus a few days per week, holding some meetings in person and some remotely.