Pooja Bhanushali
Graduate Student, Community and Applied Developmental Psychology
Psychology
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About
Pooja Bhanushali is a fourth-year PhD student in the Community and Applied Developmental Psychology program at UIC. She holds a Master’s in Counseling Psychology from SNDT University, India, and a Bachelor’s in Psychology from St. Xavier’s College, India. Intentionally shifting from a curative to a preventative and transformative lens, Pooja has been an SEL Fellow at a non-profit organization, Apni Shala Foundation, facilitating SEL workshops for over 250 students from Mumbai Public Schools and their educators and caregivers. Her research involves studying mindfulness and social-emotional competencies in education systems internationally. She has led a field scan to assess SEL infrastructure internationally, which informed the development of CASEL’s International SEL Fellows program. Currently, she is investigating the mechanisms through which teachers’ social-emotional competencies influence students’ mindfulness and prosocial behaviors.