Category: Featured

The following blog post was written by fellow UHPer and Fall 2023 SURE Award recipient, Alex Lucero (Political Science with a Public Policy focus, ’24). Read on about Alex’s research and how he plans to utilize the SURE Award funding to further expand upon his experience!

In 2022, the United States Supreme Court decided Carson v. Makin. Maine had enacted a tuition assistance program for parents who live in areas not serviced by a particular school district. Under the program, parents could choose the school they would like their child to attend, and the state would contribute funds toward the cost of the school’s tuition. Parents could send their child to any accredited private school but were prohibited from using the program toward religious, “nonsectarian” schools. The Court decided that Maine’s “nonsectarian” requirement for an otherwise generally available tuition assistance program violates the First Amendment. In light of this ruling, policymakers and voters are faced with two choices: to either support voucher programs with the knowledge that some families will use public funds at religious private schools or to oppose school voucher programs altogether.

For my senior thesis project, I designed a survey to test whether presenting voting-age Americans with information about the inclusion of religious private schools within a school voucher program affects their attitudes toward state-wide school voucher programs. The survey also aims to test whether the attitudes of voting-age Americans are further impacted by information about the specific religion of a religious private school included within the program. This survey will present respondents with a fictional newspaper vignette about Liam and Dana Bagher, who hope to send their child to an unconventional private school. The survey utilizes a cross-sectional design, where each group is told that the school is either a secular Montessori school, a religious Protestant school, a religious Muslim school, or a religious Jewish school. All four stories emphasize that while these schools meet state standards, the students will receive a non-traditional education in life.

To ensure my results are representative, and my conclusions are generalizable, I will contract with a professional online polling company. With the help of the SURE award and funding provided by the Loeb Institute for Religious Freedom at George Washington University, I hope to gather a survey pool of roughly 500-1000 respondents. Designing this survey has taught me a lot about creating survey questions. Additionally, going through the IRB review process has given me an interesting look into the many important ethical considerations that go into designing a survey. My research will allow policymakers to understand the political feasibility of advocating for school voucher legislation, given that policymakers can no longer exclude families who wish to use these benefits toward religious education.

Interested in applying for your own SURE Award funding? Find out more about the application process here!

The following blog post was written by fellow UHPer and Fall 2023 SURE Award recipient, Lexi Carmine (Biomedical Engineering, ’24). Read on about Lexi’s research and how she plans to utilize the SURE Award funding to further expand upon her experience!

Hello!! My name is Lexi and I am a senior Biomedical Engineering major. I am in Professor Zderic’s Therapeutic Ultrasound Lab and am currently working on a project dealing with the ultrasound modulation of melatonin release. I have always been very passionate about research and I found this lab when I took Professor Zderic’s class and I have loved working with ultrasound ever since. I plan to utilize the award money to continue my work on this project as it has been successful in finding statically significant results. I have learned so much from working on this project and the amount of doors that it has opened for me has been incredible. I have gotten to travel to Seattle to present my work at the BMES conference and network with various companies and schools there. Excitingly, I have also just accepted an offer for the Post Baccalaureate Program at the NIH continuing to work on ultrasound-related research with the Frank Lab. I don’t think that I would have been able to find opportunities such as these without this project, and I appreciate the SURE award greatly in supporting those endeavors. By expanding my work on my current project, I hope to continue finding promising results and present at another conference in the upcoming semester. The next steps in my work are to add a positive control as I did not have that before, and continue to run trials at various frequencies. Research is amazing to me because not only does it allow you to find those answers for yourself, it truly teaches you so much about yourself and it has taught me to be a patient and really built upon my problem-solving capabilities. Not everything always works out like it is supposed to in experiments, and understanding that simple fact has allowed me to become someone that can evolve with any situation. You learn to think critically and make tough decisions and then you can learn from your mistakes. That being said, I am so excited to continue growing from this project in the Spring semester and I am so grateful for the university’s support and support from the Honors program!

Interested in applying for your own SURE Award funding? Find out more about the application process here!

The following blog post was written by fellow UHPer and Fall 2023 SURE Award recipient, Mykala Bledsoe (Sociology, ’25). Read on about Mykala’s research and how she plans to utilize the SURE Award funding to further expand upon her experience!

I began my research when completing a project on drug crime disparities, from access to substance use resources to the role of the criminal legal system. Harm reduction and decriminalization became a large part of my research when developing recommendations for how access to harm reduction programs and materials should be prioritized when addressing the overdose epidemic in DC. This developed into my thesis research which addresses harm reduction in three main parts: local data on disparities in access to harm reduction resources; using international perspectives and examples from Portugal, Switzerland, and the Netherlands; and the implementation of a harm reduction peer educator program. The last of which is a curriculum of harm reduction skills for substance use and nonviolence, interpersonal skills, and drug policy education for students to take and apply directly with community partners. It is also important to note that centering the perspectives and needs of those most directly affected by these disparities in my research is necessary to serve any community most effectively. The award money will be used to directly fund the supplies for the peer educator program that will be provided to serve DC communities. Materials like Narcan, sterile syringes, fentanyl test strips, etc are crucial in preserving the dignity of life for people who use drugs; however, these are incredibly underfunded and underserved to marginalized communities.

Additionally, the next steps for my project are to conduct my research and get approval from the IRB to conduct qualitative interviews in Switzerland and alongside DC community partners. Then I will further develop my recommendations for policy implementation as a multi-faceted program in DC. I would also love to make it to Portugal to do some research too! The SURE award was a wonderful opportunity to explore questions within my thesis without worrying about economic barriers. I am so excited to be able to use the grant to serve my community!

Interested in applying for your own SURE Award funding? Find out more about the application process here!