Congratulations to psychology majors Jared Axelowitz, Isabel Griffin, and Nir Liebenthal—winners of undergraduate research funding made possible by a generous alumna.
Psychology Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship
Jared Axelowitz is the first ever recipient of our new Psychology Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship. The $4,000 fellowship will support Jared this summer as he undertakes research with mentor Dr. Cindy Rohrbeck on preventing sexual violence by exploring how to make bystanders to do more than just stand by. Jared’s first study will examine whether knowing a survivor of sexual assault personally is related to increased feelings of self-efficacy to intervene and willingness to intervene in hypothetical scenarios. The second study, an experiment, will expose some students but not others to stories of survivors to determine whether becoming more sensitized to the problems faced by survivors increases students’ self-efficacy to intervene.
Psychology Undergraduate Research and Service Grants
Isabel Griffin will receive a USRG grant to allow her to continue work with mentor Dr. John Philbeck on the perception of distances. They will develop a new method of testing distance perception using virtual reality technology and will examine the effects of longer exposure to the context in which an object will appear on judgments of the distance of the object from the viewer. If all goes well, Isabel will present a poster at the upcoming meeting of OPAM (an organization for researchers who study Object Perception, visual Attention, and visual Memory).
Nir Liebenthal will receive a URSG grant to support his exploratory study, mentored by Dr. Sherry Molock, of how much parents of high school athletes know about concussions and procedures for dealing with them and how they could play a more active role in preventing the negative effects associated with concussions that go untended. This is important because too often players do not report their head injuries or coaches do not spot these injuries and pull athletes from games quickly enough.
