Ducks Publish in First-Ever Filipino American Psychology Encyclopedia

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month and Filipino American History Month. The University of Oregon is honored to feature graduate student scholar, Micah Michelle Mendoza, and her faculty advisor, Dr. Krista Chronister, for their work to end domestic violence in Filipino American communities.

These two Ducks are making history themselves by publishing in the first Filipino American Psychology Encyclopedia, due to be released this year. 

Michelle is a PhD student in counseling psychology. The UO counseling psychology program is the longest accredited program, by the American Psychological Association, in the United States. Michelle is a first-generation Filipino American raised in the Philippines and New Jersey. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Rutgers University-Newark and continued to dedicate her professional endeavors in research focused on empowering communities. She applied to the University of Oregon to work with Krista Chronister after reading Dr. Chronister’s trailblazing scholarship on domestic violence in Filipino communities.

Dr. Chronister identifies as a bi-racial, Filipino American woman and is thrilled to have a community of Filipino American scholars who support her work. “Although the number of Filipino American psychologists in the U.S. is still relatively small, it is so much larger than when I started my PhD program and is growing every day. That is inspiring and I’m so proud to be working with Michelle and to watch her contribute to the discipline in unique and important ways.”

Michelle is one of two students now working in Dr. Chronister’s research lab to understand how Filipino families and communities respond to domestic violence survivors, and how we can identify the strengths and limitations of those responses and use that knowledge to inform more culturally inclusive, culturally relevant violence prevention and intervention services.

Michelle and Dr. Chronister’s chapter to be released in the Encyclopedia provides a summary of the very limited research that exists on domestic violence in Filipino American communities. Too often, Filipino Americans are overlooked by scholars or are grouped with other Asian populations in such a way that more specific learning about Filipino community responses cannot be examined. Filipinos are the second largest Asian ethnic group in the United States and yet one of the least studied ethnic groups in psychology.  

Michelle aims to change that. She is excited to be a next-generation scholar who will produce research that highlights and utilizes the strengths of communities to destigmatize dialogues on domestic violence with the goals of disrupting cycles that perpetuate harm within communities.