PSYC Ph.D. Candidate on Track to Graduate, Get Hired by Federal Government

The Washington, D.C. trip that Washington state-native Tamara Allard took the year before applying to graduate school was a large part of the reason why she decided to apply to the University of Maryland’s psychology Ph.D. program—she “fell in love with the DMV.”

Fast forward to today, and now, Allard will likely be working for the employer the District is most known for: the United States government. 

Earlier this year, Allard was named a 2023 Class of Presidential Management Fellows Finalist, a distinction awarded by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management that appoints advanced degree holders to a two-year, full-time position within one of many federal agencies. More than 10,000 individuals applied to the program this year, and Allard was one of the 850 selected finalists.

“I was sitting outside of Tracy [Riggins]'s office, and I saw the email in my inbox and thought ‘Oh, no, this is the email. I don’t know if my heart can take it,’” Allard recalled, noting her disappointment in having just gotten rejected from a different fellowship. “I eventually opened it and saw that I was accepted, and I doubled over in excitement when Tracy came around the corner and said ‘What’s wrong?!’ It was very, very funny.” 

Tracy Riggins was one of the other reasons why Allard decided to apply to UMD, given how her area of expertise tied nicely to the positive experiences Allard had while working in Masha Gartstein’s Infant Temperament Lab, and while volunteering, too.

“After I flew here, I started actively looking for people in the DMV who studied the type of science I was interested in, and that’s how I found my phenomenal, amazing and accomplished advisor Tracy Riggins,” Allard said. “I was doing a lot of volunteer service work in the realm of higher education preparation at the time, and I had become interested in the cognitive and brain mechanisms that allow children to become good learners, and some of the things that Tracy was doing when I applied just really fit that.”

Allard currently works in Riggins’ Neurocognitive Development Lab. She is also the executive board chair of the Student Advocates for Graduate Education (SAGE) Coalition, and a past president of the University of Maryland’s Graduate Student Government.

“My experience as president of UMD’s Graduate Student Government is going to help prepare me for a federal position, and that certainly is an experience I could have only gotten at the University of Maryland because the graduate student government is very involved; I was given multiple opportunities to work with student governments across the nation, members of industry, and policymakers to advocate for graduate students,” Allard said.

Allard is similarly appreciative of what she’s learned from the psychology Ph.D. program. 

“The psychology Ph.D. program at the University of Maryland does a really phenomenal job of giving you training in statistics and methodology,” she said. “I will always cherish that first year psychology series where I was actually taught R, which I've learned is a very valuable skill in the U.S. government and elsewhere.” 

“I would also say that the writing and oral presentation skills that I learned—through courses, workshops, groups and conferences I attended thanks to Tracy’s advice, leadership and guidance—are going to be useful in the federal government, and pretty much any job. There are definitely a lot of special skills that the University of Maryland has given me, and that will be transferable and marketable to these other types of careers, too,” Allard concluded.

Published on Thu, Apr 6, 2023 - 12:50PM