Project Mentor
Dr. Alaina Brenick
Department: Human Development & Family Sciences
Research Project Overview:
In my lab, we scientifically analyze individuals’ experiences of being bullied, discriminated against, or excluded because of their social identities (minority group memberships like ethnicity, immigrant status, nationality, homelessness, sexual identity and more). We explore how children, adolescents, and adults reason and make sense of intergroup prejudice, discrimination, and oppression, and we develop and evaluate interventions to promote socially just, culturally, contextually, and developmentally appropriate, anti-bias intergroup relations.
Here are a few of our ongoing projects that you could be a part of:
- The ways immigrant and minority youth experience bullying and how others perceive and respond to bullying that targets immigrant and minority students in their schools. Identifying protective factors (school, family) that help reduce the negative effects of bullying for immigrant and non-immigrant youth.;
- Exploring the range of negative experiences that transgender and gender non-binary youth face in schools and how communities can work to reduce trans and non-binary victimization. This project also involves assessing a new measure of trans and non-binary school-based discrimination.;
- Investigating how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted folks’ reasoning about rights to housing for the homeless community in Connecticut.
This is your opportunity to be a part of a research team that addresses social inequalities and helps make schools and communities safer and more welcoming for folks of all backgrounds!
Role of a SHARE Summer Apprentice:
The skills you will develop and tasks you undertake will be dependent on the project (projects are often at different stages of completion).
Working in our lab, you could learn skills such as: training in ethical practices in human subjects research (obtaining certification), searching for and synthesizing scholarly literature, coding, cleaning, and maintaining quantitative (numeric) data (excel, SPSS software), building and administering online surveys (Qualtrics software), transcribing content from focus groups, coding qualitative (open ended and subjective) data, helping prepare conference presentations, learning social scientific writing, analyzing data, visualizing data, and more.
Summer Schedule/Time Commitment:
We will have a weekly meeting. The timing will be set based on the schedules of those in the lab over summer – we work to accommodate schedules, but sometimes require folks to be flexible in scheduling with multiple people. Our projects are ongoing, so the timing of the apprenticeship is flexible.
Preferred Qualifications:
We are interested in students committed to social justice, who want to explore how research on intergroup relations can bring about meaningful change in our communities.
You do not need to have research experience; we can train you.
Don’t worry if this is your first research experience and you haven’t taken a research methods class! Once we have met and discussed 1) which project you will work on, 2) the skills you bring with you, 3) the skills you hope to develop over the summer SHARE experience, and 4) the project goals for the duration of the summer SHARE project timeline, we will determine the amount of training that is required for you as a mentee to accomplish those goals.
Training will be conducted via one-on-one virtual meetings with your mentor, group meetings with the lab, individual/small group meetings with senior members of the lab, or self-guided trainings with video tutorials and/or training manuals.
In addition to trainings, you will attend weekly lab meetings with your labmates and mentor. Everyone will report on their progress over the past week on all lab projects, have the opportunity to discuss any challenges they faced, and receive help or further guidance on those challenging tasks from labmates and the mentor. I will also hold additional individual meetings with my apprentice throughout the week to ensure they feel confident in their ability to accomplish their weekly tasks and are clear in the task goals as they progress. In my lab we work through the shared documents on servers, and I maintain contact with my apprentices through the comment and chat functions on those documents and programs (e.g., google drive, dropbox, etc.), through lab texts, emails or phone calls, as needed.
To Apply:
The application is closed.