Maryellen McClain has received the American Psychology Association Division 16’s Contributions to Mentorship Award.

McClain, an associate professor of school psychology, said mentorship is extremely important to her, and being recognized on the national level for something she cares so deeply about was particularly special.

McClain primarily mentors graduate students in research as well as in clinical training. In research, her mentoring is centered around ensuring students develop robust research skills that will set them up for professional success, but also encouraging them to explore their own research passions and find their own voice in conducting research to advance the fields of school psychology as well as autism and neurodevelopmental differences.

McClain runs the Autism & Neurodiversity Lab and directs the Learning and Developmental Evaluation Clinic (LDEC), which serves the community, but is also a training clinic for advanced graduate students in health service psychology programs (school, counseling, clinical) who are pursuing training in psychological and neurodevelopmental assessment.

“I have been so impressed with the projects my graduate students are leading within our lab—they are all such interesting studies,” McClain said. “Although everyone has various interests within the lab, all of us are invested in research related to cross-cultural considerations in the autism and neurodevelopmental disability identification process. Right now some student-led projects include identifying disproportionality in school-based autism identification for racially and ethnically minoritized students (recently accepted and soon-to-be published in Autism), understanding cross-cultural social communication and interaction skills in early childhood autism evaluations, and understanding systemic and sociocultural factors that impact enrollment in early childhood special education.”

“I am also really excited about the work going on in the LDEC,” McClain added. “We have four amazing students from three psychology subdisciplines (school psychology, counseling psychology, and clinical science) who are providing clinical services for the Bloomington and IUB community under the supervision and mentorship of myself and Anna Merrill. In addition to conducting neurodevelopmental disability evaluations across the lifespan, we are also doing evaluations for IUB undergraduate students who are interested in seeking accommodations in the classroom. We also are starting intervention services for executive functioning skill development and for children and adolescents.”

The students McClain mentors typically have professional goals that include both research, clinical practice, or varying degrees of both research and clinical practice: “Regardless of their professional goals, I believe that it is incredibly important that students develop strong research and clinical skills as our research informs our clinical practice and our clinical practice informs our research.”