Alana Muller

Alana Muller '19, selected as the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences Outstanding Graduate Student, graduated from CSUSB with 4.0 GPA and a master’s in psychological science.

After she receives her doctorate from the University of Arizona, Alana hopes to learn how to autonomously run a lab and then teach at CSUSB.

“I have a lot of pride for my … alma mater,” Muller said. “So I would love to come back and hopefully have a faculty position here, and give back to students the way I’ve received here.”

During her time at CSUSB, Alana made numerous academic presentations at conferences such as the Society for Neuroscience, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the Western Psychological Association and the CSUSB Meeting of the Minds. She is a member of Psi Chi – the International Honor Society in Psychology – the Golden Key International Honour Society, and Phi Kappa Phi. In addition, in 2018, she was selected for the campus-wide Outstanding Student Employee Award.

She said the university was very supportive of her academic career, mostly through the internal grants that helped support her research – her master’s thesis topic was titled “Neurological correlates of the Dunning-Kruger effect” – which included the Culminating Project Grant and Innovative Scholars Fund, and the ASI Travel Grant.

She was also the recipient of numerous awards, including the Student-Faculty Research Fellowship, Peer Lab Leader Fellowship and Peer Lab Consultant Fellowship.

“The school has really helped a lot in being able to fund my projects,” Muller said. “I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the funding.”