Shemiyah Holland

Shemiyah Holland – sholland@ucsb.edu

Shemiyah Holland is a pre-doctoral intern pursuing a Ph.D. in School Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she works in Dr. Shane Jimerson’s lab. She earned her M.A. in School Psychology from Bowie State University in Maryland. Shemiyah is a Nationally Certified School Psychologist (NCSP) with extensive experience working with diverse groups of K–12 students. Her research focuses on the role of positive peer and teacher relationships as a preventive strategy to enhance student engagement and promote social-emotional well-being among African American and Latinx students. 

Her long-term goal is to become a coordinator of a school psychology program, where she can mentor and train culturally responsive school psychologists to help address the national shortage in the field. Shemiyah has successfully defended her dissertation examining how Black adolescents across California perceive their school climate, using latent class analysis and covariate analyses for gender and parental education level. She is currently completing her pre-doctoral internship through the Santa Barbara Psychology Internship Consortium (SB-PIC) at a local elementary school and is expected to graduate in June 2026.