Melanie Wilcox, PhD
Assistant Professor and Researcher | Department of Psychological Sciences, the Institute of Public and Preventive Health, and the Department of Psychiatry
Augusta, GA, UNITED STATES
Dr. Wilcox's research covers multicultural counseling and competencies, as well as issues of race, sexual orientation, gender, social class.
Biography
Dr. Melanie Wilcox is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences, and is an affiliated researcher with both the Institute of Public and Preventive Health and the Department of Psychiatry at Augusta University.
She is also a licensed psychologist in Georgia (GA # PSY004400), and is Board Certified in Counseling Psychology, with experience in a number of practice settings and a broad range of clinical issues. She is currently a member of the APA Board of Educational Affairs and served as Board Chair in 2020.
Wilcox completed her Predoctoral Internship at the University of Florida's Counseling and Wellness Center, with concentrations in Multicultural Competence, Assessment, and Substance Abuse. Previously, she was the Director of the Psychological Services Clinic at Louisiana Tech, and Assistant Director of the doctoral training clinic shared by Counseling and Clinical Psychology at the University at Albany, which serves as an outpatient clinic for the local community. She additionally has much experience doing group work in substance abuse and crisis treatment in both community and college counseling settings.
Her primary research interests are in multicultural counseling, multicultural competencies, and multicultural training. Wilcox is also particularly interested in issues of race, sexual orientation, gender, and social class. Additionally, she conducts research on diversity in higher education, as well as professional issues in psychology, such as leadership development, professional identity development, and training issues.
Areas of Expertise (4)
LGBTQIA+ Equality
Racism and Whiteism
Sexism
Mental Health & Wellness
Accomplishments (8)
Augusta University College of Science and Mathematics Outstanding Young Faculty Member (professional)
(April, 2022)
Southeastern Psychological Association Outstanding Professional Paper Award (professional)
"Multicultural Orientation in Cross-Racial Clinical Supervision Processes and Outcomes" (March, 2022)
Outstanding Publication of the Year Award, Society of Counseling, APA Division 17 (Society of Counseling Psychology) (professional)
"It Takes Money to Make Money: Inequity in Psychology Graduate Student Borrowing and Financial Stressors." (2020)
Early Career Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Counseling Psychology, APA Division 17 (Society of Counseling Psychology) (professional)
(2019)
Outstanding Early Career Professional Supervisor/Trainer Award by APA Division 17 Section for Supervision and Training (professional)
(2019)
APA Board of Educational Affairs Cynthia D. Belar Education Advocacy Distinguished Service Award (professional)
(2019)
APA Early Career Achievement Award (professional)
(2018)
Louisiana Tech University Outstanding Faculty Researcher, College of Education (professional)
(2017)
Education (3)
Cedar Crest College: B.A., Psychology 2009
University at Albany, State University of New York: Ph.D., Counseling Psychology 2015
Lehigh Carbon Community College: A.S., Psychology 2007
Affiliations (10)
- American Psychological Association
- Co-Chair of APA Board of Educational Affairs Holistic Admissions Working Group
- APA Board of Educational Affairs
- Society of Counseling Psychology (APA Division 17)
- Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy (APA Division 29)
- Society for the Psychology of Women (APA Division 35)
- Society for the Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity (APA Division 44)
- Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity and Race (APA Division 45)
- Council of Counseling Psychology Training Programs (CCPTP)
- Co-Chair of the Leadership Collaborative
Links (2)
Media Appearances (2)
What are the key ingredients to a happy life?
WalletHub online
2023-09-12
What are the key ingredients to a happy life? There are many, and to some extent, it depends on the person! Important ingredients, however, include positive social relationships and a sense of connectedness to others; a sense of meaning and purpose; low stress; and having the time and resources to take care of oneself both in terms of physical health and mental health...
Is It Ever OK to Out Your Partner Like [Spoiler] Did in the Temptation Island Season 5 Premiere?
Yahoo! online
2023-06-14
The premiere of Temptation Island Season 5 seemed like a cavalcade of non-stop relationship drama as viewers were introduced to both the singles and the couples, the latter of whom are all rife with relationship issues they’re hoping to settle. However, Christopher Wells and Marisela Figueroa's couples tiff stood out among the rest. SPOILER ALERT for the Premiere of Temptation Island Season 5 Toward the end of the premiere episode, Christopher and Marisela were sitting down with the singles and discussing what they want in the future. As he’s explaining why he isn’t ready for kids, he noted Marisela wants something else before she’s ready to settle down. Immediately she stares daggers at him and he announces he’s moving off the subject. To break the tension, she tells him he can say what he was going to say. Immediately, he revealed that she was interested in having a relationship with a woman. While Chris’ approach to Marisela’s coming out was clearly problematic, they’re far from the only couple who have to navigate the dynamics of one partner coming out as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. While each person’s coming out journey is unique to them, there’s one pretty universal constant all partners should know: Don’t out another person. “Trust is foundational to any healthy relationship. It's really hard to go much further without good trust. So, when you have someone's trust breached at all in a relationship… It's a very difficult thing to repair,” Melanie Wilcox, a licensed psychologist and professor at Augusta University, told USA Insider.
Articles (9)
Ban the box: Addressing effects of systemic racism on justice-involved individuals in pathways to professional psychology
PsychologyWilcox, M. M.; Taylor, T. O.
(2022) The effects of systemic racism in the U.S. are well-documented, including within criminal justice and educational systems that disparately impact justice-involved individuals...
Oppression is not “culture”: The need to center systemic and structural determinants to address anti-Black racism and racial trauma in psychotherapy
PsychotherapyWilcox, M. M.
(2022) Psychology, and the United States more broadly, finds itself at yet another reckoning point with White supremacy and anti-Black racism...
Stalling at the starting line: First-generation college students’ debt, economic stressors, and delayed life milestones in professional psychology
Training and Education in Professional PsychologyWilcox, M. M., Pietrantonio, K. R., Farra, A.*, Franks, D. N., Garriott, P. O., & Burish, E. C.*
(2021) Economic precarity is a serious concern in psychology education and training and is experienced to a greater degree by the students of color and students from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds...
Layered cultural processes: The relationship between multicultural orientation and satisfaction with supervision
Training and Education in Professional PsychologyWilcox, M. M., Drinane, J., M., Black, S. W., Cabrera, L*., DeBlaere, C., Tao, K. W., Hook, J. N., Davis, D. E., Watkins, C. E., Jr., & Owen, J.
(2021) Supervision has been called the “signature pedagogy” of psychotherapy, and recent literature has emphasized the importance of multicultural processes in supervision...
Who’s multiculturally competent? Everybody and nobody: a multimethod examination
The Counseling PsychologistWilcox, M. M., Franks, D. N., Monceaux, C. P., Taylor, T. O., & Harris, K.
(2020) This study was a social dominance theory-driven multimethod investigation of multicultural competence. Given the concerns with self-report, we examined the relationship between study variables and both self-report and performance-based multicultural competence...
A social dominance theory perspective on multicultural competence
Counseling Psychology QuarterlyLantz [Wilcox], M. M., Pieterse, A. L., & Taylor, T. O.*
(2020) We describe and test a new perspective on understanding multicultural competencies (MCCs), namely the application of Social Dominance Theory (SDT). We argue that the process of developing MCCs is not only about learning but also unlearning; that is, unlearning beliefs developed through socialization by the dominant culture, such as the meritocracy myth, and coming to understand the role of privilege in systemic oppression...
Race and sexual orientation: An intersectional analysis and confirmatory factor analysis of the Perceptions of Police Scale
Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender DiversityTaylor, T. O.*, Wilcox, M. M., & Monceaux, C. P.*
(2020) Research suggests that, owing to bias and discrimination in policing, members of historically marginalized groups—such as Black/African Americans and sexual minority people—report more negative perceptions of police than individuals from more privileged groups...
The role of moral reasoning and attitudes regarding bisexuality in the development of bisexual counseling competence
Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender DiversityMonceaux, C. P.*, Wilcox, M. M., & Abbott, D.
(2020) Research on counselor competence regarding bisexuality is scarce, despite the greater prevalence of negative attitudes about bisexuality as compared to other sexual minorities (Flanders & Hatfield, 2014) both within the general public and the LGBTQ + community (Matsick & Rubin, 2018)...
It takes money to make money: Inequity in psychology graduate student borrowing and financial stressors
Training and Education in Professional PsychologyWilcox, M. M., Barbaro-Kukade, L., Pietrantonio, K., Franks, D. N., & Davis, B L.
(2019) Nationwide, the student debt crisis has been worsening, exacerbated by gradual changes to higher education funding since the 1980s. Recent studies (e.g., Kurz, Li, & Vine, 2018) have demonstrated that Millennials are the most educated, most student loan-indebted, and poorest (in income and wealth) generation to date...
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