Why Adler University Aligns With My Values
Choosing a doctoral program is about more than rankings, location, or even curriculum.
It is about finding a training environment that will shape not just what you know but how you think, how you practice, and who you become as a clinician. For me, that search had a clear center of gravity: I needed a program that understood psychology as both a clinical discipline and a social responsibility.
Adler University was that program.
Psychology as a Social Responsibility
I came into my doctoral training with a belief I had developed across years of working in corporate environments, fitness spaces, and community settings: mental health does not exist in a vacuum.
It is shaped by access to resources. By experiences of discrimination or privilege. By community support systems that are either present or absent. By generational narratives that carry forward through families long after the original circumstances have changed. By systems that were built, in many cases, without the wellbeing of everyone in mind.
A psychologist who does not understand these dynamics -- who approaches clinical work as if distress originates entirely within the individual and has nothing to do with the context that person is embedded in -- is practicing with a significant blind spot. I did not want to be that psychologist. And I knew I needed training that would actively work against that kind of narrowness rather than simply ignoring it.
Adler's explicit commitment to diversity, social justice, and community engagement is what set it apart. The program does not treat equity as an add-on or a values statement posted on a wall. It integrates that perspective into the clinical training itself -- into how students are taught to conceptualize cases, develop treatment plans, and understand the relationship between a client's presenting concerns and the larger systems they are navigating.
That is the kind of training that develops real clinical judgment. Not just technical competence, but the kind of empathy and attentiveness that allows a clinician to actually see the person in front of them -- fully, contextually, and without flattening their experience into a diagnosis.
What Chicago Gave Me
I completed my master's degree in Chicago, and I felt deeply connected to the city in ways that went beyond the academic experience.
Chicago is one of the most richly diverse cities in the country -- culturally, economically, and in terms of the range of lived experiences represented across its neighborhoods. Working and studying there challenged me consistently to think more critically about identity, systemic barriers, and the ways in which mental health services can be made more equitable and accessible.
It also showed me what it looks like when community-based psychology is practiced well -- when clinicians and organizations are genuinely invested in the communities they serve rather than simply providing services to them. That distinction matters. One positions the clinician as an expert delivering something to a passive recipient. The other positions the clinician as a partner, embedded in and accountable to the community.
Chicago reinforced my conviction that effective clinical work has to be responsive to the specific contexts in which people actually live. Not an idealized version of their circumstances, but the real one -- with all of its complexity, constraint, and also its strengths.
Returning to Chicago for my doctoral training was not a logistical decision. It was an intentional one. Adler's location in that city, and its deep investment in the communities surrounding it, is part of what makes it the right training environment for the kind of psychologist I am working to become.
The Military Psychology Connection
Adler's Military Clinical Psychology emphasis is another reason the program fits.
My relationships with veterans, active-duty service members, and their families have been part of my life for a long time -- professionally and personally. These relationships have shaped my understanding of trauma, resilience, and what it means to serve in ways that most people outside of military communities do not have direct access to.
I have watched people navigate the transition from active duty to civilian life and the particular disorientation that can accompany it. I have seen the ways that military culture -- with its emphasis on strength, self-sufficiency, and pushing through -- can make it genuinely difficult for service members and veterans to seek mental health support even when they are struggling significantly. I have also seen what happens when the right support finally connects -- when a veteran finds a clinician who understands their context and does not require lengthy explanation of experiences the clinician cannot easily imagine.
That population deserves well-trained, culturally competent clinicians who understand the specific presentations of trauma, PTSD, TBI, and moral injury within military contexts. Training in military psychology at Adler allows me to build that competency deliberately -- within a program that has already integrated it into the curriculum and the clinical training structure.
This is not an area of interest I developed because it seemed strategically useful. It comes from relationships that have mattered to me, and from a genuine sense that this community is one I am well-positioned to serve.
What I Am Looking for in a Training Environment
The qualities I needed in a doctoral program go beyond what any curriculum document can fully capture.
I needed faculty whose research and clinical interests align with the populations and questions I care about most -- women's issues, military trauma, intergenerational trauma within Black and African American communities, assessment, and culturally responsive treatment. I found that at Adler.
I needed a training environment where the commitment to diversity was not performative -- where students from underrepresented backgrounds are genuinely supported and where the curriculum reflects the full range of communities psychologists will serve. I found that at Adler.
And I needed a program that would hold me to a high standard of both clinical competence and cultural humility -- that would push me to develop not just skills but the kind of reflective practice that makes a clinician grow throughout an entire career, not just during training. I found that at Adler.
Why Alignment Matters
It is possible to complete a doctoral program at an institution whose values do not match your own. Many people do. But what you absorb during training -- the implicit frameworks, the clinical assumptions, the habits of mind that get reinforced over years of supervision and coursework -- shapes the clinician you become at a level that explicit instruction alone cannot fully override.
Choosing Adler was a choice to train inside an environment where the values I already held could be developed into real clinical competency. Where social justice was not something I had to hold separately from my training, but something that was integrated into it.
That alignment is not a luxury. It is essential preparation for the work I intend to do. If you need clarity on what your next step in your path is schedule a session: https://www.jasmynsteele.com/shop/p/career-academic-clarity-call
Jasmyn Steele, M.A. is a doctoral student in Clinical Psychology (Military Track) at Adler University, Chicago, IL. She is an active member of the Association of Black Psychologists, the Adler Black Student Association, and the Traumatic Stress Psychology Student Association. Follow her work at jasmynsteele.com.
