What led you to become a researcher?
I was raised in a single-parent, low-income home. My mother did not graduate high-school and as I progressed through my education I found it more and more difficult to navigate. As a teenager, I realized my queerness. As I was raised religious, I felt that this portion of my identity was something to be hidden. Throughout highschool, I struggled to reconcile the beliefs of my family and peers with my own identity. During my undergraduate education, I still struggled with this inner conflict. I also realized during this time that I was woefully unprepared for college. As a first-generation student, I struggled both with the financial burden of college and the emotional toll the stress would cause.
It was through these two major conflicts in my life that my research interests arose. I am interested in two major areas: adolescent identity support and higher education transitions. I hope that my research can help to mitigate the issues that I faced, especially in identity development of adolescents. At the end of the day, I care most about helping others.
What has been a particularly meaningful research experience as a TxBSPI fellow?
I have worked on many projects as a fellow, and we are exposed to and take part in every area of the research process. In particular, I have enjoyed working on projects that allow for hands-on experience and study development. The first such project was an intervention designed by Dr. Christopher Bryan, Dr. Cameron Hecht, and myself. The intervention aimed to reduce partisan animosity in its participants and was successful in doing so. This intervention was added into a working paper which is linked here.
The second is my most recent and ongoing project evaluating a large language model’s ability to generate human-like text in classroom-specific settings. In this project, I’ve had the privilege to work on study design, stimuli development, and analysis, and will be working on a paper utilizing the study next semester. I have also worked minorly in Python in order to fine-tune OpenAI’s GPT-3. These projects are particularly meaningful not only because of their relevant content to my interests but because they were uniquely challenging by requiring me to learn new research skills and methodology.
What other projects have you been involved with as a TxBSPI fellow?
- Police Transparency Project. I worked with Dr. Kyle Dobson to implement an intervention experimentally manipulating the introduction of a police officer to a civilian. We found that by adding a “transparency statement” to their introduction, officers could increase trust and reduce feelings of stress from the civilian. I co-designed a portion of the study and managed the RAs and data collection.
- Algebra One Teaching Practices. I conducted qualitative analysis of open-ended text from Algebra One teachers across Texas regarding their classroom practices. The report for analysis can be viewed here.
- Broad regard in Advising Centers. I am writing a paper with Dr. Eric Smith, on how “broad” conversations that go beyond academic topics impact advising relationships.
- Charitable Appeals Project. I worked with Dr. Marlone Henderson to create study design and measures and submit IRB documentation. This project is designed to experimentally find a mechanism for the correlation between construal level and pro-social charitable giving.
- Synergistic Mindset Study. I worked with Dr. Cameron Hecht, where I have helped with data collection and RA management for a study in Spring and Fall of 2022. This project features an intervention that encourages students to change their mindset on stress and growth in the classroom, drawing from work done by Alia Crum and David Yeager.
How did the TxBSPI fellowship support your personal or professional development?
I believe every project I have worked on at TxBSPI has been significantly impactful. There are obvious skills that I’ve developed, such as an in-depth understanding of the survey program Qualtrics or the ability to read scientific papers in a more thorough manner. I’ve learned analysis skills, coding skills, and many other basic research “must-haves”. However, there are more nuanced skills that I’ve been able to gain through this fellowship that are more difficult to impart and learn. I have learned how to collaborate with others, how to write in an academic manner and the best methods for performing research. Much of my work has become intuitive, with an inherent understanding of the “next steps” for some of my projects. These are skills that have prepared me for my graduate program that I could not have learned without the stellar mentorship and guidance I’ve received in this fellowship.
What are your goals for the future?
In the long-term, I want to develop tools and programs for educators that help them develop supportive classroom-environments. In my graduate education, I hope that I can research what supportive environments look like and how educators linguistically signal support to students. After attaining my PhD, I hope to continue in higher education as a professor at a university.
What led you to become a researcher?
My family and a desire to create change have always pushed me toward research. Especially as a Black woman in America, you see and often experience firsthand the injustice happening throughout our society. Change begins with how we interact with others and within our world. My campus involvement also sparked my curiosity about why historically racist systems exist and inspired me to begin research that could help dismantle these systems. As such, I decided to major in psychology, which allowed me to study stigma and its negative impact on behavioral health and help-seeking behaviors.
I plan to use my career in research as a powerful tool to advocate for individuals marginalized by society. I intend to explore the systemic and internal ways the African American community has been deterred from seeking mental healthcare. Doing so also highlights the importance of critically examining “culturally-inclusive” clinical practices that may be well-intentioned but may also endorse negative stereotypes and deficit-based views of historically marginalized communities. I want to determine how these practices deter communities of color from seeking care. The need to better represent people of color within the clinical mental health community is also essential to change.
What has been a particularly meaningful research experience as a TxBSPI fellow?
During the Fall 2021 semester, I led a virtual undergraduate Learning Assistant Fellowship for an introductory chemistry course intending to increase the use of inclusive practices. I helped recruit students for the fellowship program and developed a weekly lesson plan for each session with Dr. Eric Smith. As the fellowship coordinator, I led our weekly 1-hour sessions where we discussed topics such as imposter syndrome, student engagement, and cultivating inclusive spaces for students.
I have also been working with Drs. Denisa Gándara and Victoria Kim on their ‘Research-to-Policy Collaboration’ (RPC) Equity project. The goal of this research was to explore potential barriers preventing faculty of color from involvement in policy work. My role on the team was to conduct literature reviews, coordinate and conduct virtual interviews with participants, conduct qualitative analysis and coding of our interviews, and assist with the write-up for our final Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) proposal and paper.
What other projects have you been involved with as a TxBSPI fellow?
- Many Worlds Intervention. I worked with Drs. Eric Smith, David Soloveichik, and Julie Zuniga to test a short video explaining scientific evidence that many versions of ourselves exist simultaneously can improve well-being and expand future identities.
- Stress Affordances Study. The goal of this research was to observe the impact of teaching students that stress is a positive thing; the stress responses in our bodies allow us to perform better on the task at hand. I facilitated the study, including having students wear Empatica E4 bracelets, and collecting two saliva samples.
- CMHC Research Brief. I worked with Dr. Brittany Boyer to analyze a data set of over 13,000 undergraduates and graduates nationwide to develop independent research questions. Through this work, I explored maladaptive perfectionism among African American students and how first-generation status, gender, and SES impact anxiety, depression, academic achievement, well-being, and subjective wellness.
- Mindset-supportive Natural Language Processing. In this project, I facilitated the development of an intervention evaluating Natural Language Processing (NLP) generated text and its ability to support students’ growth mindset.
How did the TxBSPI fellowship support your personal or professional development?
The fellowship program has been more than I could have ever anticipated! After graduating college, I did not feel confident with my background in research which is a crucial component graduate programs look for in candidates. As a result, I was never really drawn to research because before now, I had mainly only done the research for a simple grade in a class. Although I want to do more work in clinical psychology and working with clients, my work at TxBSPI has allowed me to use my research knowledge to influence my future career. Finding this opportunity has allowed me access to many great resources and opportunities to be the best candidate for my graduate applications.
This program has challenged me to work outside of my comfort zone while growing my skills and strengths. My work has given me a close-up look into the different study and intervention creation stages. I have been exposed to working in R and understanding how to clean and analyze data. Through the LA Fellowship and Stress Affordances study described above, I got to see how projects are developed and organized and had a chance to interact weekly with participants and work with data collection. I have been able to build my qualitative research and interview skills through my work on the RPC project. My current projects have allowed me to explore past literature to influence how to create current projects and find gaps in the research.
What are your goals for the future?
As a clinical PhD student, I want to observe protective factors in the African American community and how they persist through various cultural practices. In looking at these protective factors, I think this will also reveal the negative ways in which sources of generational trauma and stigma have been intertwined into the mindsets of community members. I want to call attention to how African American community members are working to dismantle these negative perceptions through the rise of social media usage and telehealth services, increasing access to mental health resources. I am interested in exploring how stigma can further exacerbate mental health disparities among racial/ethnic minority communities. Moreover, intersectional perspectives are vital to how I plan to approach my future research and career. Especially among communities of color, intersectionality provides critical insight into how individuals interact with the world around them. Throughout my research career, I hope to better understand what stigma is and how it expresses itself within different communities, which will eventually allow me to work toward dismantling stigma within underserved communities.
What led you to become a researcher?
I believe all people deserve education, mental and physical wellness, and community. Yet many people, including myself, have experienced how discrimination and bias can undermine these needs. I grew up in Palo Alto, California: a mostly White, wealthy city that is known for housing Stanford University and its youth suicide rate that is four times the national average. I also spent much of my childhood in Hunter’s Point in San Francisco, where my mom works and my grandma lives. This neighborhood inspired “trauma-informed practices”: a concept developed because Black kids from the area were exhibiting PTSD symptoms due to being raised in an inner-city environment. I have experienced the way that locations, and the pressures embedded within their cultures, can contribute to trauma in both rich and poor neighborhoods. This informs my research question today: how does society induce trauma and mental illness and can we heal from it in a way that inspires us to change society?
What has been a particularly meaningful research experience as a TxBSPI fellow?
I have been most impacted by my research experience with creating interventions. Spanning three projects, I was able to lead focus groups and recruitment, create control and treatment survey materials on Qualtrics, learn how to analyze data using R, and coordinate with both the UT Austin Chemistry Department and a grassroots organization in Chicago attempting to stop youth gun violence within Black communities. This experience was especially important to me because as a scholar, I plan to partner with political organizations to generate research that has tangible applications, not solely theoretical implications. Additionally, I have been able to leverage the results from the behavioral science interventions to shift policies within the Chemistry Department to better support marginalized students in STEM.
What other projects have you been involved with as a TxBSPI fellow?
- Policy and Structural Affordances in Education: A Meta-analytic Review and Synthesis. I am conducting a sociological and political science systematic review with Jamie TV in order to create a taxonomy for social psychologists to use about the systemic forces that impact undocumented immigrants’ mental health. This will result in a paper with Dr. Greg Walton and Dr. David Yeager.
- Mindset-supportive Natural Language Processing Project. I, with Mac and Micheala, lead study design and development of the project testing whether NLP generated text could effectively support students’ growth mindsets as compared to real educators’ language. This will result in a paper with Dr. David Yeager and a poster presentation with fellow post-baccs
- Closer Look Intervention Training Curriculum. I contributed to curriculum development for a training intensive on how to develop and run interventions
- Guest Lecturer. I was provided the opportunity to be a lecturer at UT Austin in the Sociology Department. I presented “‘You Wouldn’t Be The First’ Radical Elders in the San Francisco Unified School District (1980-1990): A Fight for De-gentrification and Liberated Zones.”
- Independent Project: “You Wouldn’t Be The First.” I have conducted oral history interviews, analyzed policies, and curated a public art showcase where San Francisco community members will, this year, be able to co-create political theories about what alternative education could look like in their city. I also created a political education class for all participants in the interview portion of the project
How did the TxBSPI fellowship support your personal or professional development?
By far, my favorite thing about being a part of this program was the ability to learn, in-depth, and experiment freely with research methods and research topics through different mentors and participation in a variety of projects. The fact that I was able to lead collaborations with another academic department, a grassroots organization, and conduct independent research made me feel well equipped for my PhD applications. I attribute the scaffolding, individualization, feedback from PIs, and freedom of the fellowship with my ability to turn in PhD applications this year; I have attempted to turn them in two years in a row and had never completed it because of nerves, ignorance about the “hidden curriculum” of applications, and a lack of knowledge on how to get started with finding programs. I also appreciate that everyone that I have worked with in the institute is laid-back, generous with their time, and oriented towards equity. It has been a great community to be a part of!
What are your goals for the future?
I hope to be a critical social theorist at the intersection of individual mental health, the redistribution of institutional resources, and social justice. I plan to conduct policy, economic analyses, intervention, and archival research as well as oral history interviews with folks experiencing suicidal ideation. I am specifically interested in the concept of politicized healing: the idea that traumas caused by state-sanctioned violence can be healed through being taught how to fight that oppression in society. I draw on a variety of critical theoretical perspectives—including feminist, disability, and mad studies—to highlight the role power plays in shaping healing, trauma, mobilization and social services. One long-term goal after graduation is to incorporate my understanding of politicized healing into a brick and mortar respite center. It would be staffed by volunteers who have experienced suicidal ideation themselves and would teach individuals about the role society might play in causing their suicidal thoughts as well as give them tools for social activism.
What led you to become a researcher?
As a first-generation Latina immigrant with DACA, I am no stranger to the structural barriers and inequalities immigrants and their families confront. I was raised in a low-income household in South Texas with Salvadoran immigrant parents who held Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Given this upbringing, migration and inequality have been at the forefront of my mind from an early age. When I entered college and encountered a world where I could not lean on my family or the institution for support in navigating college as an undocumented student, I found solace in my undocumented peers. I attempted to pay this forward by co-founding Rooted, a student-led immigrant collective advancing educational equity for immigrant students at UT. The time I spent supporting younger undocumented students shaped my understanding of the interplay between the state and institutional contexts that undocumented students must navigate. It also provided me with a unique lens into the multifaceted experiences of undocumented young adults. Through this experience, I became increasingly interested in how policies have the potential to drastically shape the everyday lives of immigrants in the United States, leading me to pursue academic research opportunities.
What has been a particularly meaningful research experience as a TxBSPI fellow?
For my independent research project, I conducted research to support Rooted, a student-led immigrant collective I co-founded years earlier and continue volunteering with. Our goal was to identify the unmet needs of UT students who were undocumented, held temporary status, and or were from a mixed-status family. In this project, I designed a survey, facilitated focus groups, analyzed the data, and developed policy recommendations alongside doctoral students. A key finding was that students felt misunderstood and invisible by university administrators and staff, which made students less likely to engage on campus and seek help. The study results have been used to garner support and demonstrate the need for an immigrant resource center at UT. I also led the writing of a multi-year grant proposal for further research funding and student support. This project has strengthened my ability to manage a multi-disciplinary team, integrate qualitative and quantitative data, and disseminate findings to academic and non-academic audiences.
What other projects have you been involved with as a TxBSPI fellow?
- Longview of Parenting and Health Project. In this project with Dr. Crosnoe, I facilitated and analyzed semi-structured interviews with mothers of adult children with severe medical conditions and examined how this long-term caregiving related to the health of aging mothers.
- Students v Institutions: How Policymakers Distribute Funds to Higher EducationEconomic Recession. In this project with Dr. Gándara, I analyzed interviews with policymakers to determine how they decided upon funding cuts to higher education institutions during a recession and the extent to which they considered how these cuts would differentially impact disadvantaged students.
- Stereotype Threat Study (Psychological Science Accelerator). This project is part of a multi-site large scale stereotype threat study with African American/Black college undergraduates to test various threat-increasing cues and threat-decreasing strategies on academic performance. I managed data collection and recruitment for the research site at UT Austin.
- Understanding How U.S Immigration Policies Affect Latino Adolescents’ School Lives. In this project with Dr. Weitzman, I used a legislation tracking database to determine how state-level immigration laws relate to educational outcomes among Latino adolescents.
- Policy and Structural Affordances in Education: A Meta-Analytic Review and Synthesis. Alongside Nirel, we are conducting a systematic review to create a taxonomy for social psychologists to use about the systemic forces that impact undocumented students’ mental health and educational outcomes. This will result in a paper with Dr. Greg Walton and Dr. David Yeager.
How did the TxBSPI fellowship support your personal or professional development?
I had minimal exposure to the graduate school application process before the fellowship but knew it was something I wanted to pursue. The TxBSPI Fellowship has provided me with an amazing support system that guided me through the application process, which I would not have had otherwise. I am deeply grateful for the immense support and encouragement I have received from my mentors that has allowed me to grow as a researcher.
What are your goals for the future?
My long-term goals in pursuing a Ph.D. are to produce rigorous research that humanizes the unique experiences of immigrants with uncertain legal status and sheds light on potential solutions to alleviate inequalities. I hope to be a leading immigration researcher theorizing the nuances and complex experiences of immigrants and their families. Additionally, I am committed to holding space and supporting others who are often at the margins of society and academia.
During my graduate training, I hope to extend my current research and open related lines of inquiry. I am particularly interested in examining the impact of legal status on the mental health, sense of belonging, and educational outcomes of undocumented students in conservative states with inclusive in-state tuition and state financial aid policies (e.g., Texas & Utah) and states with a growing immigrant population with restrictive or no policies in place (e.g., Alabama & Louisiana). Given the rise of a new generation of undocumented immigrants entering adulthood without any protections or ability to work legally, this research is necessary to understand the development of immigrant young adults post-DACA and how state policies impact their well-being, educational experiences, integration, and social mobility. Moreover, I am interested in expanding this research to include young adult children of undocumented immigrants and their experiences, especially considering the increasingly restrictive socio-political climate and its far-reaching effects on all family members.