The Future of Youth Mental Health

As a future clinical psychologist, Kaylene Yee ’26 is committed to youth mental health. A two-year fellowship at Massachusetts’ McLean Hospital and Mass General Brigham has set her up to pursue this passion.

After graduation, Yee will work as a post-baccalaureate clinical fellow in McLean’s Belmont Adolescent Partial Hospital Program. She looks forward to learning from clinicians and therapists as they support adolescent mental well-being.

This opportunity came to Yee thanks to their Pitzer mentor, Associate Professor of Psychology Marcus Rodriguez. Rodriguez has assisted many Pitzer students in seeking this fellowship. Not only did he help Yee with the application, but he also provided professional connections and research opportunities throughout Yee’s time at Pitzer.

“His classes are some of the best that I’ve taken,” said Yee. “It’s great to have a personal relationship with someone who can give me direct feedback and work collaboratively with me.”

With funding from Pitzer’s JF Harmon Faculty-Student Summer Research Assistantship Program, Yee collaborated with Rodriguez to build psychology education resources for social media.

Being a psychology student at Pitzer also connected Yee with Pitzer alum Liam Davis-Bosch ’24. Yee has supported Davis-Bosch in developing a climate anxiety intervention curriculum for K-12 educators — a project that Davis-Bosch started at Pitzer and is now further developing.

Boundary-Breaking Thesis Research

As a double major in psychology and gender and feminist studies, Yee is embarking on their own research with two theses.

Their psychology thesis looks at resilience in emerging adults (ages 18 to 25) based on parenting approaches. Yee seeks to fill a gap in psychology research, which tends to focus on parenting young children.

“I’m looking at qualities like warmth, autonomy, how easygoing parents are and how much they follow through with expectations or consequences,” said Yee. “Then I look at how that correlates with emerging adults’ resilience scores.”

Meanwhile, Yee’s gender and feminist studies thesis explores queerness beyond sexuality. She shared this research onstage earlier this spring for a PZ Talk — a Pitzer take on the popular TED Talk series. Yee’s work unpacks how gender and sexuality labels have been constructed to uphold hierarchies.

“I see queer as a verb,” said Yee. “Queer is encapsulating everything that is not normative, as an existential condition. I talk about how I queer my own life. It’s a little bit of a call to action, but also an open door to people who have never touched queer theory.”

Yee has appreciated the depth and breadth of their Pitzer curriculum.

“You can curate your education in a way that makes sense for you and what you’re passionate about,” they said.

Pushing Social Responsibility Forward

Yee arrived at Pitzer with a dedication to political activism and community engagement. That dedication has only grown stronger. Her leadership roles have included: senior admissions fellow, president of the Pasifika Asian Student Union and head sponsor of the APIDA Sponsor Program at Pitzer’s Center for Asian Pacific American Students.

Yee continuously encourages and challenges the campus community’s engagement with social responsibility. She also challenges herself. She asks herself how she can deepen her social justice practice every day.

“I am very big on embracing discomfort and holding yourself accountable,” said Yee. “Coming to Pitzer, I was already passionate about this, but now I have a clear understanding of how I want to take action going forward.”