Name
Jacqueline Tams
Program
Doctor of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology
Research Supervisors
Drs. Jamie Piercy and Kalee De France
Hometown
Taber, Alberta, Canada
Awards
– Sir James Lougheed Award of Distinction
– Canada Graduate Research Scholarship – Doctoral
– Public Scholars Initiative Award
Please describe how the awards have helped you academically and in your research endeavours.
I’m genuinely so grateful for the financial support I’ve received through these awards. There are several elements of pursuing a PhD that make it a massive commitment, and finances were a huge one, at least for me. It’s not easy to step away from full-time employment!
These awards have given me the opportunity to continue developing my skills as both a researcher and clinician in an environment where I feel financially supported. Having that support has allowed me to be more present in my training and research, and I find that it helps me bring more passion and excitement to the work. It also gives me the opportunity to continue pouring into the other important areas of my life, which ultimately makes me a better student, researcher, clinician, and person.
Please describe your research. What inspires you about your research?
As I write this, I’m about a week into my PhD, so you’ll have to stay tuned as things progress! My master’s thesis examined how poverty during adolescence impacts young people’s ability to successfully regulate their emotions, and we also investigated how stress and attachment influence these relationships.
For my doctoral research, we are in the early stages of designing a community-based participatory action research project alongside a local organization that serves adolescents experiencing problematic substance use and their families. We want to understand what successful recovery means to youth, recognizing that research increasingly shows that young people can have multi-dimensional understandings of what recovery looks like. We also want to examine the current and desired role of families and caregivers in youth substance use treatment, and work collaboratively to develop evidence-based strategies for increasing family involvement.
What inspires me most about my research is the opportunity to learn from so many diverse voices. I’m in a unique program where I’m training as both a scientist and a clinician, which means I get to take what I learn from clients into my research, and what I learn from research into my interactions with clients. I’m excited by the possibility of research that doesn’t just stay on a page, but can be shaped by the people it is intended to serve and ultimately make its way back into clinical practice.
What does being a Public Scholar mean to you?
Being a UBCO Public Scholar is an incredibly exciting opportunity. To me, it means getting support to move the impacts of my research outside the bounds of academia and into the real-world settings where the work is actually happening.
In what ways do you think the PhD experience can be re-imagined with the Public Scholars Initiative?
Research progress is slow and iterative, and there are several important reasons why that is the case. However, I think the Public Scholars Initiative allows PhD students to explore new avenues for translating research into tangible strategies for public good. For me, that means thinking beyond the traditional dissertation and asking what else can come from the research process. How can we make research more accessible? How can we build meaningful partnerships with the people and organizations who will actually use the knowledge we create? And how can we create something that is useful outside of traditional academia (e.g., conferences, journals)?
How do you envision connecting your PhD work with broader career possibilities?
My long-term goal is to work as a clinician-scientist, supporting adolescents and their families through evidence-based clinical practice and research excellence. I want a career where I don’t need to choose between systems-level advocacy and individual work, and clinical psychology provides an opportunity to pursue both in so many different ways.
As a result, it feels like all of my PhD work directly maps onto my future goals. I’m developing the skills to conduct rigorous research, work collaboratively with community partners, understand the experiences of young people and families, and translate research into practice. I hope to carry all of these skills forward into a career where I can contribute both at the individual level and to the larger systems that shape mental health care for vulnerable British Columbians.
How does your research engage with the larger community and social partners?
My doctoral research is being developed in partnership with a local organization that works with adolescents experiencing problematic substance use and their families. Because we are still in the early stages of the project, our community partnership is helping shape the research itself rather than simply serving as a place to share findings once the study is complete.
Through our community-based participatory action research approach, we hope to work collaboratively with youth, families, clinicians, and community partners to identify the questions that are most meaningful to them and develop strategies that are grounded in their experiences.
This is so critical – it’s essential that our research reflects the realities of the people it’s intended to support. It’s so easy for us to make assumptions about what a good research question is, or what adolescents and families need, but we can’t know this without asking.
How do you hope your work can make a contribution to the public good?
I hope my work can contribute to the public good by helping us better understand what recovery means to young people experiencing problematic substance use, and by identifying meaningful ways to involve families and caregivers in their care. Adolescents and their families often navigate complex systems of mental health and substance use care, and I hope my research can contribute to services that are more responsive to what young people and families actually need.
It has been an honour for me to be involved in research and frontline work with youth who tell incredible stories of resilience, hope, and vulnerability. These experiences have shaped the kind of clinician and researcher I want to become. My ultimate goal is to contribute to systems-level research, program design, and intervention implementation while retaining an unwavering commitment to frontline advocacy.
Why did you decide to pursue a graduate degree?
A PhD was definitely not on my radar for the majority of my undergraduate degree. I didn’t get meaningful exposure to research until the end of my third year when I joined a research project as an undergraduate research assistant. I’ve always known that I wanted to work in a “helping” profession, so-to-speak, but that experience introduced me to another way of making a difference.
I quickly realized that I love research! At the same time, I knew that I wanted to work directly with people. A PhD in Clinical Psychology allows you to get the best of both worlds.
Why did you choose to come to UBC Okanagan and study?
UBC Okanagan is a perfect fit for me for several reasons. First and foremost, I am so grateful to receive incredible mentorship and supervision from Drs. Kalee De France and Jamie Piercy. Their passion for supporting resilient and strong communities makes pursuing this degree incredibly exciting, and their commitment to both research and clinical excellence makes UBCO feel like the dream fit for me.
I’d also be remiss not to mention how incredible the faculty are within UBCO’s graduate psychology program. I’ve been so privileged to train and learn from an incredible group of educators who have supported my training.