The Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program has selected its first faculty fellow.

Alejandro Morales, an associate professor of psychology, has been awarded the fellowship. The McNair Faculty Fellow will play a critical role in supporting first-generation and low-income, or underrepresented students gain entry to and succeed in graduate school.

Morales’ research focuses on the psycho-social-cultural mechanisms of adjustment in Latino immigrant families with children who serve as translators and interpreters. He also studies the processes that facilitate the psychological wellbeing of Latino gay men. Morales earned his doctorate and his master’s in counseling psychology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and his bachelor’s in psychology from Cal State Dominguez Hills.

Before coming to Cal Poly Pomona in 2013, Morales was an assistant professor at the University of Missouri, where he served as a faculty mentor for the McNair Scholars Program and as a member of the Editorial Review Panel for the McNair Scholars Program Journal. He has been a dedicated supporter of Cal Poly Pomona’s McNair Scholars Program, having served as a faculty mentor for six of the program’s students over the years.