Mentorship and What to Expect
I take a highly collaborative approach to mentoring. On most research projects, one student—sometimes two—takes the lead and serves as the point person. However, everyone in the lab contributes: refining the idea, shaping the methodology, and collecting and processing data, including our psychophysiological measures. Lab mates see a lot of each other, and a good deal of thinking happens in everyday conversations, as well as scheduled meetings.
New graduate students typically start by contributing to ongoing lab projects, getting a feel for how we work and gaining insight into how their interests overlap with the lab’s. I then work with students to develop questions that are genuinely theirs. Often a project begins as something a student has been thinking about, which we then shape together into something testable, bringing it to the whole lab to get additional feedback and develop further.
My own interests center on everyday stress and resilience, but because that lens touches so much of social psychology, there’s room to bring in other areas and build something new.
Above all, my goal is to help students make the transition from student to colleague—someone who doesn’t just execute research, but drives it.
–Mark Seery, PhD
Programs
UB’s Social-Personality Psychology PhD Program accepts applications once a year, with a deadline in early December.
UB’s General MA Program in Psychology accepts applications once a year, with a deadline in early March.
Planning to Apply?
I will review applications for the 2026-2027 application cycle.
For more information, please feel free to reach out.