Four BSOS Students Recognized at Undergraduate Research Day

Four BSOS students were each recognized at this year’s Undergraduate Research Day, an annual event co-sponsored by the Office of Undergraduate Studies and University of Maryland Libraries to highlight student research and projects produced through their courses, internships or other programs.

Spencer Bowdle and Madelyn Harris were both named an Undergraduate Researcher of the Year, Emily Eason earned the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA) Library Award, and Karoline Trovato was one of three students presented with a Library Award for Undergraduate Research.

"I am so proud of these undergraduate researchers," said Associate Dean Katherine Russell. "It takes courage to ask important questions, knowledge to know how to find the answers, and determination to see a study through. I can't wait to see what great challenges these students set out to improve through their future research endeavors." 

We connected briefly with each student about their award, research and future plans below. 

Spencer Bowdle, Undergraduate Researcher of the Year

Bowdle, a dual-degree student in the Department of Economics and Department of Mathematics, was nominated by ECON Associate Professor Ethan Kaplan for his work on city minimum wages’ impact on U.S. rent prices. 

“The topic is one of great importance to public policy and surprisingly is a topic economists know little about,” said Kaplan, who worked with Bowdle on this project this past year. “Spencer hunted down multiple data sources, learned very quickly about appropriate statistical methodology and has ended up with an excellent piece of research. I fully expect Spencer to be able to publish his results in a top economics journal before starting his Ph.D., and that is a truly remarkable achievement.”

To determine that, according to his results, “typical rent prices don't increase much, if at all, following minimum wage hikes,” Bowdle used Zillow to collect monthly rent price data from zip codes in and around 16 cities that have adopted minimum wage increases over the years. He shared more on his methods and findings at Undergraduate Research Day, and will again in a seminar for interested ECON faculty and staff after finals.

“Generally, I'm very interested in research that has clear policy implications, and I think with the growing debate on raising minimum wages in the U.S., this project satisfies that,” Bowdle said. “I'd love to continue my work on this project and ideally get more comprehensive rent data that can allow me to investigate how low-cost housing units react differently than other units to minimum wage increases.”

Bowdle will be graduating in May, and shortly thereafter begin working as a research assistant at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

Madelyn Harris,  Undergraduate Researcher of the Year

Police violence against Black Americans during the summer of 2020 is what largely inspired Banneker/Key Scholar and senior psychology major Madelyn Harris to collect data from 194 Black college students on what specific types of social support and coping strategies were positively and negatively associated with negative mental health outcomes. This research, titled “Black Grief Matters: Disenfranchisement, Social Support, and Coping Among Black College Students Grieving the Deaths of Black Americans by Police Brutality,” doubled as her undergraduate honors thesis.

“I felt helpless as I scrolled through post after post expressing solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, realizing with a sense of dread that for many, this was a trend which would eventually wither, and likely sooner rather than later,” Harris recalled. “I realized that I would only be able to find my own peace in this world if I did everything in my power to keep this movement alive.”

Though it’s important to note that her research was correlational, and that replication is needed before intervention, Harris found that collective coping spaces may be providing space for rumination on stressors and contribute to increased stress and prolonged grief, whereas ritual-centered coping mechanisms and emotional/informational support may respectively decrease perceived stress and prolonged grief. 

This summer, Harris will submit her research manuscript for publication, and in August, present her findings at the national conference of the American Psychological Association under Division 17, the Society of Counseling Psychology. She will be attending Boston College to participate in their counseling psychology doctoral program in the fall, and during her graduate studies, hopes to replicate this study among more diverse samples of Black Americans, and investigate racial socialization among multiracial families.

“Madelyn’s outstanding work, comparable to master’s theses completed by doctoral students in our counseling psychology program, can be used to inform the development of interventions and coping strategies for Black college students who are exposed to police killings of Black Americans,” said Karen O’Brien, the PSYC Professor and Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies who nominated Harris. “I am confident that Madelyn will continue to make meaningful and lasting research contributions to the field of counseling psychology.”

Emily Eason, IDEA Award

For her Honors Humanities Keystone Project, third-year senior Emily Eason—who will be graduating in May and returning in the fall as a full-time graduate student specializing in Nonprofit Management and Leadership via the Bachelor's/Master of Public Policy program—was inspired by her hometown.

“As a permanent resident of Germantown, I marveled at the large Latino community in Gaithersburg whenever I visited,” she said. “While I observed a thriving community on the surface, my awe generated curiosity to devise a research question: How have the lives of 1.5 Generation Latino youths in Gaithersburg, MD been impacted by their immigration journeys from their country of origin to the United States, especially during the peak development years of their adolescence?”

By “1.5 Generation,” also known as 1.5G,  Eason is referring to individuals who’ve been educated in their home country, then immigrated to a new country before or during their early teens. In conducting individual interviews with nonprofit coordinators and community leaders serving the 1.5G and 1.5G Latino students in Gaithersburg, leading a focus group session with 1.5G students from Gaithersburg high schools, and creating a 42-question survey for 1.5G Latinos in Gaithersburg, Eason gained insights into the three main stages of life for the 1.5G Latinos immigrating to the United States: temporary independence/semi-independence, adolescence and dependence, and adulthood and (stalled) permanent independence. 

While pursuing her MPP, Eason plans to write multiple policy papers sharing the anthropological, theoretical, and historical knowledge about the immigrant demographic in the United States she has gained as part of this work.

“Emily Eason is an incredibly talented and driven student, and I was thrilled to hear that she received the award,” said Christina Getrich, the ANTH Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies who nominated Emily. “I was quite fortunate to meet her in the midst of a challenging semester of online learning, and it has been an absolute pleasure to see her flourish as she conducted independent research and produced a high-quality keystone paper.”

Karoline Trovato, Library Award for Undergraduate Research

Karoline Trovato’s Library Award for Undergraduate Research was a long time coming, having been working with her award nominator, also O’Brien, on an online, video intervention to empower young women to make thoughtful choices regarding their future partners since the summer before her junior year. 

The now-senior, who will be graduating in May and returning this fall to participate in UMD’s Counseling Psychology Ph.D. program, designed and executed a study to test the effectiveness of that online intervention, PARTNERS, by having more than 300 college women complete surveys before and after either watching the intervention, watching a partial and adapted version of the intervention, or being presented with a control condition. 

“I felt inspired to pursue this research given that both historically and especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, the vast majority of unpaid family care has been provided by women with devastating associated outcomes,” said Trovato. “In analyzing my data, it was really exciting to find that the PARTNERS intervention not only successfully educated college women about family work and effective communication, but women who took the PARTNERS intervention reported the most confidence in communicating with a romantic partner using the PARTNERS Communication Model we developed.”

Trovato will soon write and submit a manuscript for publication, plans to present her work before the American Psychological Association, and hopes to continue to focus her research on caregivers, romantic relationship satisfaction, and couple communication. One day, she hopes to become a professor at an R1-level institution that “has the positional capacity to conduct meaningful research and mentor the next generation of scholars and activists.”

“Karoline is an extraordinary student who has distinguished herself with regard to using library and information resources to conduct innovative and creative scholarly work,” said O’Brien. “She is a rising star who will continue to use library and information resources to make extraordinary contributions in her future career as a professor and counseling psychologist.”

Photo of Emily Eason with Dr. Adriene Lim, Dean of Libraries, was taken by Thai Nguyen, Photographer, UMD Printing Services Team.

Published on Mon, May 2, 2022 - 1:15PM