Becoming Her Dream
“Don’t just talk about it, be about it” is Keondra Phillips‘ motto. Knowing that talk can only get you so far in life, Phillips has wisely channeled her dreams into actions that have had concrete results. Her vision was clear: “I knew I wanted to be a psychologist. And I knew that I wanted to go to graduate school.” As Phillips begins her PhD program in Human Services Psychology (HSP) this fall, she is fulfilling this long-term goal of entering graduate school and will soon be well on her way to becoming a psychologist.
Focused and determined, Phillips earned her B.A. in Psychology from Hampton University, making the dean’s list every year. She also participated in the COR (Career Opportunities in Research) program, a federally-funded program providing research experience for students in their chosen fields. Under Dr. Zina McGee, Phillips conducted research on adolescent victimization and had the opportunity to present the results at the Academy of Criminal Justice in the Sciences (ACJS) research forum in Boston. “COR exposed me to research and made me a well-qualified candidate for graduate school,” she says.
“UMBC was my first choice,” says Phillips. While she considered other schools, Phillips felt UMBC’s curriculum was superior. “UMBC’s program offers everything I wanted in a HSP program. It’s unique because it offers a combination of both community and clinical training which gives you more career options. I was impressed that I could do both.”
“I’m definitely family and community-oriented. I wrote my high school senior English project on dysfunctional families,” explains Phillips. Her particular interest in community is also what drew Phillips to UMBC and, specifically, to her mentor, professor and director of the HSP program, Dr. Kenneth Maton.
“When I looked up his research on the web page, I felt drawn to his work because of its community emphasis,” she says. Phillips is also enthusiastic about working with Dr. Maton on his research because “it relates to what I have done before—it’s in the same realm”.
