Message from the Psychological Clinic
Welcome to the Pennsylvania State University Psychological Clinic homepage. Our clinic functions with three primary goals in mind:
- Training of graduate students in our doctoral (Ph.D.) training program in Clinical Psychology (adult and child tracks)
- Provision of evidence based psychological services to residents of Centre County and the surrounding area
- Conducting “state of the art” research in order to develop new and more effective ways of helping our clients cope with the difficulties they face
In order to accomplish these missions, we are committed to providing services to all individuals regardless of race, gender, religion, ethnic background, economic status, or sexual orientation. Because we operate as the training facility for one of the leading Clinical Psychology programs in the nation, our professional staff includes faculty in Clinical Psychology, adjunct faculty, staff psychologists and psychiatrists, and licensed mental health professionals. Many hold clinical appointments in the Department of Psychology. Many serve as clinical supervisors to the staff clinicians who are primarily composed of graduate students enrolled in the Clinical Psychology doctoral training program.
The Clinic is licensed by the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services as an Outpatient Psychiatric Clinic and accepts referrals from individuals and various community agencies. We operate, in part, as a contracted provider for Centre County’s Mental Health/Intellectual Disability/Drug and Alcohol Program/Early Intervention Services and receive referrals from the Base Service Unit (BSU) in Bellefonte. Thus, some of our services are funded in part under an agreement with Centre County. We also accept most major insurance providers.
Table of Contents
Clinic Directors
Theresa Welles, Ph.D.
Director of the Psychological Clinic, Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology, Licensed Psychologist
Dr. Welles oversees the training, supervision, and support of clinical professional staff and contributes to clinical training program development in collaboration with clinical doctoral faculty. She oversees all the administrative aspects of Clinic operations, including but not limited to administrative staff supervision; administrative support for the Research Practice Network; development and implementation of the policies and procedures for the operation of the Clinic; and collaboration with clinic staff, psychology department leadership, and the medical director. Her clinical experience broadly ranges from working with clients with phase of life and adjustment issues, to neurological spectrum disorders, personality disorders, anxiety, and depression, across the lifespan. Over the past 5 – 10 years, she has held leadership positions at universities, medical clinics and private practice, and her clinical work has specialized in treating anxiety and trauma -related disorders, such as PTSD, OCD, health anxiety, social anxiety, specific phobias, panic, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. She specializes in evidence-based treatments, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), exposure-based therapies (E/RP, PE), Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), and mindfulness and emotional regulation strategies for anxiety and other stress-related issues. She is dedicated to helping people of all ages heal from trauma, face their fears, build personal resiliency, and increase independence, grounded confidence and self-acceptance. She is a staunch advocate for using solid research, teaching, and supervised clinical experience, to shape the future practice of psychology.
Estee Hausman, Ph.D.
Assistant Director of the Psychological Clinic and Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychology
Estee Hausman is an Assistant Director and clinical supervisor of the Psychological Clinic. She provides clinical supervision of therapy and assessment to doctoral students in clinical psychology, provides individual and group psychotherapy, provides consultation services to schools and other community agencies, and also serves in a variety of training and administrative functions. She is also a clinical supervisor at Penn State’s Anxiety Clinic. In her clinical work and supervision, she utilizes a developmental psychopathology lens, drawing from behavioral, cognitive-behavioral, and third-wave cognitive-behavioral approaches. Her primary interests include typical and atypical regulation of both positive and negative emotions in children and adolescents. Specifically, her work has focused on atypical regulation of positive emotion (affective, cognitive, neurobiological) with respect to anxiety and depressive symptoms and disorders in children and adolescents. She also has interests in clinical training and supervision as means of disseminating evidence-based practices. She has also worked extensively on an NIMH-funded clinical outcome study of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), is a certified PCIT therapist, and provides administration of and clinical supervision within Penn State’s PCIT clinic.
Sandra Testa Michelson, Ph.D.
Assistant Director of the Psychological Clinic, Associate Clinical Professor, Licensed Psychologist
Sandra Testa Michelson is the Assistant Director of the Psychological Clinic and clinical supervisor at the Psychological Clinic at Penn State University. She provides direct supervision to clinical doctoral students, provides direct treatment services for Clinic clients, and also serves in a variety of training and administrative functions. She is a broadly-trained clinical psychologist, and utilizes a variety of therapeutic modalities including psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, and integrative psychotherapies in the treatment of a wide range of clinical difficulties. Her primary research interests include the explication of factors and mechanisms which may trigger, exacerbate, and/or perpetuate the susceptibility toward and maintenance of both general and specific forms of clinical psychopathology in order to enhance prevention and treatment approaches. She is especially interested in the complex and oftentimes multidirectional interactions that occur between innate influences, developmental factors (e.g., attachment history, family of origin issues, learning history, sufficiency of other necessary resources for optimal self-regulation), and impact of exposure to adverse conditions (e.g., acute/chronic/traumatic stress) across multiple domains of functioning (e.g., cognitive, affective, interpersonal, physiological, and neurobiological) at various stages of development which may render an individual susceptible to a variety of clinical disturbances. She has also worked extensively on NIMH-funded comparative treatment outcome studies for Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia and is currently serving as a clinical supervisor at Penn State’s Anxiety Clinic.
Bettina Welz, M.D.
Psychiatrist, Medical Director
Dr. Welz is a medical doctor and psychiatrist with an interest in community mental health and psychopharmacology. At the Penn State Psychological Clinic, she provides direct patient care in collaboration with the psychologists, as well as performs administrative tasks and supervision. She graduated from Swarthmore College and Pennsylvania State University Medical School, and completed residencies in Internal Medicine and Psychiatry at the University of Virginia. Dr. Welz is board certified in Internal Medicine and Psychiatry.
Senior Clinical Staff
Kristen M. Kelly, PhD, CRNP
Senior Clinician and Supervisor
Dr. Kelly’s roles include providing clinical supervision for doctoral students, as well as providing direct clinical care to Clinic clients. In addition, her research interests center on the areas of parent-infant mental health and developmental psychopathology, particularly as they relate to parents’ mental representations, cognitive-affective attributions, and corresponding parent-infant behaviors. Specifically, one of the main functions of her research is to develop more accurate and comprehensive models for understanding how distortions in parents’ perceptions of themselves and of their children influence parenting behavior, the quality of parent-infant interactions, and child developmental outcomes. She is especially interested in studying how such distortions manifest in vulnerable populations, such as mentally ill parents and those who have suffered severe trauma, given that these individuals are at higher risk for experiencing impaired perceptions and difficult interpersonal relationships.
Sharon Nelson, PhD
Assistant Clinical Professor
Dr. Nelson is an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Psychological Clinic. Her primary interests are involve improving identification, access and quality of care for individuals with severe, chronic mental health disorders that impact how they think about themselves or others (such as personality pathology or serious mental illness diagnoses). Special interests include using large data and healthcare records to assess systems of care issues. She also has interests in training clinicians in providing excellent care and being able to conduct program evaluation of their interventions and clinical setting.
Kristen Smith-Simon, Ph.D.
Assistant Clinical Professor
Kristen Smith-Simon is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in the treatment of children, adolescents, and their families. She received her Ph.D. from Penn State University’s Clinical Psychology program and her B.A. from the University of Michigan. She completed her pre-doctoral internship at Geisinger Medical Center in the Pediatric Psychology track and her post-doctoral training at the Penn State Psychological Clinic and MidStep Center for Child Development. Her work at the Penn State Psychological Clinic includes providing individual and group psychotherapy, supervision of graduate student therapists, teaching graduate-level courses, running the Parent-Child Behavior Skills Group program, and assisting with the administration of the Anxiety Clinic. Her research interests broadly include understanding family factors involved in children’s socio-emotional development, with specific interest in childhood anxiety and behavior problems.
Ashley Schrag, MEd, LPC
Ashley Schrag received her Bachelor’s degree in Human Development and Family Studies from The Pennsylvania State University. She went on to earn an M.S.Ed. in Psychological Services and an M.Phil.Ed. in Professional Counseling from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. While conducting her graduate studies, Ashley completed an internship at Hall-Mercer, a community mental health center affiliated with the hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. There she was responsible for providing individual therapy to adult and child clients, co-leading therapeutic groups for adults and children, and assisting with the intake process. Additionally, Ashley gained experience working with parents and children in the Head Start program. After graduation, Ashley went on to work at the Penn State Psychological Clinic, where she continues today as a Staff Therapist. In her role at the clinic, Ashley provides individual and group psychotherapy to adults and children, as well as providing psychological consultation services to individuals with intellectual disabilities and their service providers. She also devotes time to mentoring and supervising current counseling students. Ashley is currently a Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of Pennsylvania. She enjoys serving a variety of clients, with particular interest in working with adults to address issues related to anxiety, depression, interpersonal difficulties, and challenges related to adjustment and phase of life transitions.
Kelly Berthold, LCSW
Kelly is a licensed clinical social worker and received her master’s degree in social work from University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work. At the Psychological Clinic, she is a senior staff member, clinical supervisor, group facilitator and individual therapy provider. Kelly has had training in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), and Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and works with clients to help foster a balance of acceptance and change into their lives using integrative approaches to blend empirically supported models of therapy to meet an individual’s personal needs. Kelly enjoys working with individuals of all backgrounds and experiences, including anxiety and depressive disorders, grief and loss, life-stage and adjustment difficulties, personality disorders, attention challenges, mindfulness coaching, and more. Kelly accepts her clients and meets them where they are in their journey and utilizes a holistic approach while providing relevant psychoeducation and skills to support clients in desired change attempts.
Jennifer Connell, LCSW
Jennifer Murray Connell is licensed clinical social worker and Penn State alumna (Political Science) and who the psychology clinic staff in July 2017. Jennifer earned her Masters of Social Work from the University of South Carolina and has over 25 years of experience providing clinical and consultative services to children, youth, adults, and families.
Jennifer splits her time between the psychological clinic and the Child Study Center. As part of the Child Study Center training institute, Jennifer serves as the director of the Friendship Group Program and is the instructor for the 2-semester course sequence for undergraduates. Jennifer served as the community outreach.
Before returning to Penn State, she spent 18 years in the New Haven, Connecticut area. In New Haven, she worked in both university and community settings. She worked as a clinical instructor of Social Work at Yale Child Study Center providing clinical services and supervising worked and supervised home-based clinical services to children and their families. Jennifer also worked as a school social worker and as the Social Work/Counseling Coordinator for a network charter school serving Bridgeport, New Haven, and Hartford.
Senior Staff
Kahlil Hasib - Director of Information Technology
Susan Hollywood - Office Manager
Hannah Holsing - Compliance Specialist
Administrative Staff
- Jaclynn Zucco –Client Care Specialist
- Alice White –Client Care Specialist
- Katherine Evans, B.S. –Administrative Support Specialist
- Rachel Meyer, LPN –Health Service Assistant
Clinical Faculty Supervisors
- Peter Arnett, Ph.D.
- Karen Bierman, Ph.D.
- Louis Castonguay, Ph.D.
- Pamela Cole, Ph.D.
- Estee Hausman, Ph.D.
- Frank Hillary, Ph.D.
- Cynthia Huang-Pollock, Ph.D.
- Yo Jackson, Ph.D.
- Kenneth N. Levy, Ph.D.
- Amy Marshall, Ph.D.
- Michelle Newman, Ph.D.
- Aaron Pincus, Ph.D.
- Kristin Smith-Simon, Ph.D.
- José Soto, Ph.D.
- Sandra Testa Michelson, Ph.D.
- Martha Wadsworth, Ph.D.
- Stephen Wilson, Ph.D.
Staff Therapists
- Christina Ford, PhD, LPC, NCC
- Erin Myers, MS,LPC
Pre-licensed Clinical Staff
- Brian Crosby, Ph.D.
- Lauren Parker, Ph.D. M.Ed., NCC, CRC
Auxiliary Supervisors
- Kytam Dawood, Ph.D.
- Anthony Junod, Ph.D.
Doctoral Trainees
- Ayse Asan
- Irene Baik
- Megan Bradson
- Adam Calderon
- Sky Cardwell
- Young Chung
- Andrew Cwiek
- Roua Daas
- Katherine Davis
- Walter Dyer
- Bre Genaro
- Alexandra Halberstadt
- Christina Hlutkowsky
- Josie Huang
- Vanessa Kim
- Metzli Lombera
- Gabrielle Lowenthal
- Morgan Mannweiler
- Hollie Mullin
- Haruka Notsu
- Holly Pham
- Natalie Pottschmidt
- Sreelakshmi Pushpanadh
- Gavin Rackoff
- Adithi Rajagopalan
- Camilo Rodriguez
- Alexandra Roule
- McKenna Sakamoto
- Jeremy Schwob
- Becca Slotkin
- Nathaniel Smith
- Sara Soto
- Daniel Spina
- Sara Such
- Michael Tan
- Garrett Thomas
- Alex Trahan
- Esha Vaid
- Samantha Vervoordt
- Tyler Warner
- Elsie Yan
- Zhenyu Zhang