Melanie Domenech Rodríguez Lectures on Broadening Cultural Understanding

Research Week 2023 kicked off with the D. Wynne Thorne Lecture on Monday featuring Melanie Domenech Rodríguez, a professor in the Department of Psychology and chair of the Institutional Review Board at Utah State.

During the lecture in the Merrill-Cazier Library, Domenech Rodríguez spoke about her career at USU, her research efforts, and the impacts of her work.

“Given the history of racism and xenophobia in the United States, I am particularly interested in race and ethnicity as dimensions of culture that create disconnections between providers and their clients,” Domenech Rodríguez said.

The lecture happens annually during Research Week and highlights the recipient of the previous year’s D. Wynne Thorne Career Research Award. Named after the first vice president for research at Utah State University, the award is presented to an individual who has completed outstanding research in their career and has done the majority of their work at USU. It is the most prestigious faculty award at Utah State.

Domenech Rodríguez is the 2022 recipient of the award.

“I want you to notice two guiding goals that show up across my work,” Domenech Rodríguez said. “That is to serve my community and to diversify the psychological workforce.”

Over the course of two decades, her research has had a noticeable impact. Among other benefits, the work she has done on cultural competency and adaptation has given health practitioners better tools to work with ethnically and culturally diverse families.

“I have a particular passion for ensuring that we have strong guidance on treatments that work,” Domenech Rodríguez said, “and that these are delivered by providers that have a depth of knowledge about the treatment and the sensibility to make treatment accessible and relevant to the person that they are serving.”

Domenech Rodríguez’s research output is impressive. She has published 87 peer-reviewed journal articles, four books, 27 non-peer-reviewed articles and 17 manuals. To this date, several of her papers have been cited more than 100 times.

She has also served in a number of prominent roles at Utah State and in her field, is an award-winning mentor, and is passionate about training the next generation of psychological providers to work with a range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

She ended the lecture by encouraging listeners to improve their own cultural competence. “Pay attention to how your culture is showing up in what you are doing,” Domenech Rodríguez said. “Name that. And then build out and start thinking about how this might show up in other places and spaces or contexts.

“We can have an infinite number of tools, we have the ones that we can imagine. And the more we connect with others across cultures and contexts, the bigger our imaginations get.”

Learn more about the other presentations and displays happening during Research Week 2023 at rw.usu.edu.