Loyola Marymount Students Win CLD and Convention Scholarships

Volume 59, No. 2 Spring 2009

The phone rings. It is a parent who recently attended an IEP meeting, and who is looking for an outside mental health referral. In my hand is a note from a teacher who wants to follow up on our consultation regarding a student having self-control issues on the playground. On my desk, the Behavior Assessment Systems for Children-2 (BASC-2) surveys I need to administer to teachers, the counseling curriculum for my social skills group, and the memo about upcoming SST meetings. Ah, the life of a school psychologist!

So begins the essay written by Loyola Marymount University grad student Karen Orellana, winner of the California School Psychology Foundation’s Cultural and Linguistic Diversity Scholarship.

The scholarship was awarded to Ms. Orellana at the Presidential and Awards Luncheon held March 13 at the 60th Annual CASP Convention, held in Riverside. In addition to Ms. Orellana’s scholarship, Lalita K. Paranatantiri, a student at Chapman University in Orange, received the scholarship for a second year.

Alnita Dunn, CLD Scholarship sub- committee chair; Lalita Paranatantiri, continuing scholarship winner; Karen Orellana, scholarship winner; Guest Speaker Dr. Carolyn Bennett Murray; and CLD Chair Brandon Gamble.

Lori Sarkissian, also a student at LMU, was the winner of the Paul Henkin Convention Scholarship, which pays all expenses to one graduate student to attend the annual convention. (First-year school psychologists may also apply, however, no applications were received for the 2009 convention.) Ms. Sarkissian not only attended the convention, but was a member of a panel and a paper presentation and volunteered at the Riverside event.

Paul Henkin was a Los Angeles Unified School District school psychologist who left a legacy scholarship for students and first-year school psychologists who shared his understanding of the need for continuing education.

“I …feel that attending CASP conferences is like a breath of fresh air; it gives school psychology students and professionals a chance to focus on their own education and learn new and improved ideas and interventions to return to Lori Sarkissian work ready to face any challenge,” Ms. Sarkissian wrote in her application. The CLD Scholarship, awarded each year at the CASP Convention, was created by CASP to further cultural and linguistic diversity among school psychologists. The $1,500 scholarship is renewable for up to three years.

Ms. Orellana works at two inner-city elementary schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, where she has come to understand the school psychologist’s role to include advocacy, leadership, collaboration, and community liaison.

“I have been exposed to the inequities in the educational opportunities of today’s youth,” Ms. Orellana wrote in her application. “However, I have also been exposed to the powerful mpact of advocacy and leadership a school psychologist can have at an individual level, and systems level, to begin to shift these inequities to an educational system that is socially just.”

Ms. Orellana was also honored at the Cultural and Linguistic Diversity Breakfast, held on the morning of March 13. Guest speaker for that event was Carolyn Bennett Murray, Ph.D., Professor at the University of California at Riverside. She spoke about her research into the expectations teachers and others have of nonwhite ethnic minorities.

Both the CLD Scholarship and the Paul Henkin Convention Scholarship are awarded annually. Deadline for applications is December 9. For more information, please visit the CASP web site at www.casponline.org.