Faculty Mentor Biographies

Dr. Chi began college in 1990 not really knowing what he wanted to do. After meandering through general education courses and dabbling in advertising for about 3 semesters, he took an abnormal psychology class, met the professor who eventually became his mentor, worked in a summer camp for children with special needs, and got interested in clinical psychology.

After he graduated from college, he took one year off to study for the GRE and worked for the Department of Pediatrics at University of California at Irvine on a NIMH-funded multisite randomized clinical trial of treatment for children diagnosed with ADHD. Through this research position, he met his future graduate PhD mentor. In 1995, he applied for PhD programs in Clinical Psychology and was admitted to University of California at Berkeley. After receiving his doctorate in 2002, he worked one year at University of Southern California, studying the developmental processes of psychopathy, then accepted a three year research position at Vanderbilt University, studying depression in adults and children. From 2006-2024, he worked at various public and private colleges and universities in the Midwest, teaching general psychology, theories of personality, abnormal psychology, and research methods. Although his primary focus is teaching, he has continued his scholarly work and has attended national and regional psychological conferences with his research collaborators and students. He has published in the area of ADHD treatments, parent-child relationships, depressive-biases, adult psychopathy, and locus of control. Currently, he is in the process of finishing three writing projects on stress and depression, the impact of religiosity on chronic illness, and how depressive-biases may impact ratings of clinical informants.

He is the eldest of three children in his family, who all live in Katy, TX. He has been married to his wife Grace for almost 20 years, and they have a teenage daughter Kimberlynn, and a 6-year-old shih tzu Koko. He and his family attend and serve at the St. Mark Missionary Church in Mishawaka, Indiana. In his spare time, he enjoys hanging out with his family, watching football (especially University of Texas and Green Bay Packers), gardening, composting, and watching KDramas, Marvel, and Star Wars films with his family.

Areas of Expertise: ADHD, parent-child relationships, adult psychopathy, depression, behavioral observation methodology.

Educational Experience:

• Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) and Master of Arts (MA) in Clinical Psychology, University of California at Berkeley
• Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Psychology: University of Texas at Austin