Congratulations to team member Lindsay Rotblatt, who successfully passed her written and oral qualifying examinations on June 20, 2018.
To achieve doctoral candidacy status in the Graduate School, the student must satisfy the qualifying examination requirement as described in the Graduate Catalog. The Qualifying Examination is one of the bases upon which decisions are made regarding admission to candidacy for the doctorate degree at the University of Florida. The Qualifying Examination (a) must contain both a written and an oral portion, and (b) must cover the major and minor areas of study. The Department of Clinical and Health Psychology administers the Qualifying Examination in accordance with these regulations and utilizes the examination in two ways. First, the examination is used to evaluate the student’s mastery of content areas that form the scientific and applied foundations of professional psychology. Second, the examination provides an opportunity for students to demonstrate competence in those special areas of expertise they individually identify as important to their development as professional psychologists. Toward this end, the Qualifying Examination fosters the student’s integration of information from didactic coursework, practical experience, and personal research on advanced topics of contemporary importance to clinical and health psychology.The Qualifying Examination is conducted by the doctoral supervisory committee and is tailored to mastery of content in which the student wishes to gain special expertise. Students may choose to to write (1) a research proposal, written in the style of an NIH predoctoral (F31) application, (2) a review paper, or (3) responses to committee-provided questions.
Lindsay selected the research proposal option. Her proposal was entitled Cardiovascular Risk, Vascular Neuropathology, and Medication: Impacts on Cognition in Aging. The proposal describes a study that would seek to investigate the longitudinal relationships among cardiovascular risk, white matter disease, and cognitive outcomes in a sample of over 20,000 records culled from the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center. Lindsay expects to revise the proposal and submit it in consideration for funding by the National Institutes of Health.
Lindsay’s committee from the department includes Ronald A. Cohen, PhD ABPP, Michael Marsiske, PhD (Chair), Catherine E. Price, PhD ABPP, and Kathryn M. Ross, PhD. Lindsay’s external committee member was Ann L. Horgas, RN PhD FAAN, College of Nursing.