Draft:Frederick Leong

Frederick Leong

Frederick T. L. Leong is currently Professor of Applied Psychology at Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, China. He is a leading psychologist specializing in cultural diversity psychological science. Leong is a first-generation Asian American of Chinese descent, who was born and educated in Malaysia. He came to the United States in 1975 on an international student scholarship to study for a B.A. in psychology at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. He graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1979 with high honors in psychology. His undergraduate honors thesis, “Males’ Responses to Female Competence,” was published in Sex Roles (Deutch & Leong, 1983).

Leong went to the University of Maryland, where he completed graduate studies with a double specialty in counseling and industrial/organizational psychology in 1988. His dissertation was titled “Cross-Cultural Epidemiology of Psychological Disorders: A Comparison of Asian-Americans and White Clients in Hawaii’s Mental Health System” which was published in a special issue of Journal of Community Psychology (Leong, 1994). During his graduate studies he was also selected as a Minority Fellow of the Minority Fellowship Program, American Psychological Association, from 1984 to 1986. As part of the doctoral program, he completed a 2-year internship at Dartmouth Medical School in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he focused on psychodynamic psychotherapy. Leong’s academic appointments include the following: (a) instructor and then assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Southern Illinois University; (b) associate professor, full professor, and director of training in the Department of Psychology at Ohio State University; (c) full professor and director of the counseling psychology program in the Department of Psychology at the University of Tennessee; and (d) full professor in the Department of Psychology at Michigan State University (MSU), where he was hired to lead the Multicultural Initiative and where he served as the founding director of the Consortium for Multicultural Psychology Research. He retired from MSU in 2021 and took a professor position in China to continue his research on Chinese Psychology

Research

Professor Leong’s major research interests center on two major areas in cultural diversity science: (a) cultural and personality factors in career development, adaptability, and work psychology, and (b) culture and mental health, (especially with Asians and Asian Americans) and cross-cultural psychotherapy. Leong has authored or coauthored 192 articles in peer-reviewed journals and 126 book chapters. He has also edited or co-edited 10 books, 10 handbooks, and 1 encyclopedia (Encyclopedia of Counseling, 2010, Sage). His handbooks include The Psychology Research Handbook: A Guide for Graduate Students and Research Assistants (1996; second edition 2005, third edition is in press, Sage), Handbook of Racial and Ethnic Minority Psychology (2003, Sage), Handbook of Asian American Psychology (second edition 2006, Sage), APA Handbook of Multicultural Psychology (2014, APA), Handbook of Career Development: International Perspectives (2014, Springer), ITC International Handbook of Testing and Assessment, (2016, Oxford), Handbuch Stress und Kultur: Interkulturelle  und kulturvergleichende perspektiven cultural (2020, German, Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH), and the APA Handbook of Psychotherapy (2022 in press, APA), He has delivered over 185 conference presentations and 197 invited presentations.  Leong’s other professional contributions and roles include serving on the editorial boards of numerous psychology journals (e.g., Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice & Training; Journal of Counseling Psychology; Journal of Career Assessment; Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology; Journal of Career Development; Asian Journal of Social Psychology; Asian American & Pacific Islander Journal of Health; The Counseling Psychologist; and Psychological Assessment) and being guest editor of numerous special issues of journals on topics that have focused on ethnic, racial, minority, or international issues (e.g., Career Development Quarterly, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice & Training, and Death Studies). Other editorial positions have included the following: (a) associate editor for International and Cross-Cultural entries in Alan Kazdin’s Encyclopedia of Psychology, (ii) counseling section editor for Charles Spielberger’s Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology, and (c) editor for two book series focused on racial and ethnic minority psychology. He also served as Associate Editor of the American Psychologist and the Archives of Scientific Psychology, two flagship journals of the American Psychological Association. Further information on the development of Leong’s research program can be found in two award addresses that were published in the American Psychologist (Leong, 2007) and The Counseling Psychologist (Leong, 2020).

Professional Contributions

Leong has helped advance cultural diversity within the American Psychological Association across multiple domains over the past 25 years. Much of this service to the field has focused on scientific education and training. He was a member of the Advisory Committee for the Minority Fellowship Program for 10 years (1996-2006). This committee was tasked with selecting new MFP Fellows (funded by NIH and SAMHSA) and Post-Doctoral Fellows, as well as planning for the APA conventions and the Summer Training Institute. He also served for 15 years on the Implementation Task Force for the Commission on Ethnic Minority Recruitment, Retention, and Training (CEMRRAT) (1999-2015). The task force reviewed and awarded small grants for improving the recruitment, retention, and training of ethnic minority students. It was also charged by APA President Richard Suinn to evaluate and select the winners of the Suinn Awards.

He has also been elected to other APA boards and committees to represent the perspectives of cultural, racial, and ethnic minority psychologists and communities. On these boards and committees, he sought to inform APA leadership and members regarding the needs and perspectives of psychologist of color and their communities. During his service on the APA Board of Scientific Affairs he initiated the APA Advanced Training Institute on Research Methods with Diverse Racial and Ethnic Groups (a week-long training workshop). He has also provided similar services in the following APA boards and committees with the same goals: Committee on Employment and Human Resources (1996-1998); Committee on Psychological Tests and Assessment (CPTA) (2003- 2005); Membership Board, (2012-2014); and the Committee on International Relations in Psychology (CIRP) (2000- 2002). Due to my extensive experience and contributions across multiple APA boards and committees, he was also appointed and served on several key APA wide task forces. For example, he was selected to serve on the APA Good Governance Task Force (2011- 2013). The Good Governance Project was established to review and make recommendations to improve the governance structure and practices within APA related to the Board of Directors (BoD) and Council of Representatives. To implement this change, APA established the Needs Assessment, Slating, and Campaign Committee. NASCC is tasked with recruiting, interviewing, and slating at-large candidates for the APA Board of Directors who are then elected by the general membership. I was selected to serve on the inaugural NASCC (2017-2019) which helped slate the first group of at-large BoD members. In that role, I focused on increasing the cultural diversity within the slates of candidates for the BoD.

Leong’s service and dedication to the field of psychology has also extended to the international arena. He has participated actively in international congresses of psychology and has been invited to organize numerous symposia at these congresses. Examples of these include the Pacific Science Congress in Beijing (1996), the International Congress of Applied Psychology in Singapore (2002), the International Congress of Psychology in Beijing (2004), and the International Congress of Applied Psychology in Athens (2006). He is also working on organizing a symposium on the intersection between personnel psychology and vocational psychology for the International Congress of Psychology in Berlin in 2008. Leong has consistently supported the development and advancement of psychology in Asia and on Asian issues. On many occasions he has been invited to serve as a discussant at conferences featuring Asian issues. He has served as an external examiner on doctoral dissertations in Pakistan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangladesh, and the United Arab Emirates. He has invested time in teaching and researching in the Asia-Pacific region by undertaking visiting professor appointments at the University of Hawai’i, Chinese University of Hong Kong, and National University of Singapore. His most recent contribution in this arena was the establishment of the Shanghai-MSU Research Consortium on Career and Work Psychology. He has also contributed to the development of Chinese Psychology.

At Michigan State University, Leong established the Consortium for Multicultural Psychology Research to promote more multicultural research in the department and across campus. Major activities of the Consortium were (a) The Annual Distinguished Lecture on Multicultural Psychology: https://www.youtube‌‌.com/‌‌‌‌channel/‌‌UC3gvZ-NuXSLQLio42ICoh1A, (b) The APA Advanced Training Institute on Research Methods with Diverse Racial-Ethnic Groups, a week-long training workshop held at Michigan State University: https://www.apa.org/‌science/programs/ati/res-diversity, (c) Joseph White Outstanding Student Multicultural Research Award, (d) Multicultural Visiting Scholars Program, and (e) Data Archives for Student Research.

Awards

Leong is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association in 8 Divisions (1 General, 2 Teaching, 5 Measurement and Quantitative Methods, 12 Clinical, 17 Counseling, 29 Psychotherapy, 45 Culture, Race and Ethnicity, 52 International) as well as the Association for Psychological Science, Asian American Psychological Association, International Academy for Intercultural Research, and the International Association of Applied Psychology

Leong has also received numerous awards in Psychology including: (a) Annual Achievement Award for Teaching and Training, Minority Fellowship Program, American Psychological Association (1992), (b) Early Career Scientist-Practitioner Award (later renamed as the Fritz and Lin Kuder Early Career Award), Division of Counseling Psychology, American Psychological Association (1993), (c) Distinguished Contributions Award of the Asian American Psychological

Association ( 1998), (d) John Holland Award for outstanding achievement in career and personality research, Division of Counseling Psychology, American Psychological Association (1999), (e) APA Award for Distinguished Contributions to the International Advancement of Psychology (2007), (f) Stanley Sue Award for Distinguished Contributions to Diversity in Clinical Psychology, Division 12 (Society for Clinical Psychology) of the American Psychological Association (2009), (g) Distinguished Career Contributions to Research Award, Division 45 (Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues) of the American Psychological Association (2009), (h) APAGS Kenneth and Mamie Clark Award for outstanding contributions to the professional development of ethnic minority graduate students (2013), (i) Lifetime Achievement Award, Asian American Psychological Association (2013), (j) APA Award for Distinguished Service to Psychological Science, presented by the Science Directorate of the American Psychological Association (2013), (k) Leona Tyler Lifetime Achievement Award, APA Division 17 (Society of Counseling Psychology) (2018), and (l) Distinguished Award for the International Advancement of Psychotherapy, APA Division 29 (Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy), (2021).

Impact

Frederick Leong is a leading psychologist in cultural diversity psychological science in the world. The cumulative impact of Leong’s academic record is best reflected in his Google citation count of 25,033 citations and an h-index 88 (88 of his publications have been cited at least 83 times) and an i10-index of 2223 (223 of his publications have been cited at least 10 times). https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=FZoyAK8AAAAJ&hl=en

With a Google h-index of 88 and an i10-index of 223, AD Scientific Index has ranked him among the top 3% of researchers in China and in the world. https://www.adscientificindex.com/‌scientist/frederick-leong/1385592. Similarly, the Stanford University project that identifies the world’s top scientists (using standardized information on citations, h-index, co-authorship-adjusted hm-index) has also listed him among the top 2% of scientists in the world in 2021. More recently, Research.com identified him as one of the top psychology scientists in the United States with a rank of 840 out of 1,000. https://research.com/scientists-rankings/psychology/us?page=8.  Upon moving to the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen in 2023, he was added to the list of top psychology scientist in China ranking 6th in the country. https://research.com/scientists-rankings/psychology/cn