Summer Research at Chatham - Part Two
Our “Summer Research at Chatham” series continues with two students, Erleen Ellis ‘24 and Gary McMurtrie ‘21, whose projects center on promoting inclusion and safety within the Chatham community. Make sure you check out part one for even more examples of real research projects ChathamU students are undertaking, while getting hands-on experience in their fields. Check out part one of our series here.
Erleen Ellis ‘24
Study Title: Recognition, Inclusion, and Voice Project
Professors: Alexandra Reznik (Assistant Professor of English and Women’s & Gender Studies); Mike Cadaret, PhD (Assistant Professor of Graduate Psychology)
Erleen Ellis ‘24
● Erleen worked on a narrative project focused on fostering inclusion at Chatham. She worked on gathering and analyzing data centered on marginalized students’ education and self-concept, submitting her findings and story as part of her research team’s grant application, and helping prepare a manuscript for publication.
Q: What drew you to this project in particular?
I was super interested in the project description and it spoke to my History and Cultural Studies background.
Q: What are the contributions you’ve made that you’re most proud of?
Speaking about my experiences as a student of color was more influential in the project than I thought it would be. Because the project is for students like me to be able to communicate their stories to a wider community I was able to help provide certain insights.
Q: As your work as a research assistant comes to a close, what’s next for your summer?
This summer I will continue to train for next lacrosse season and I started a barista job!
Q: What made you want to work as a research assistant?
Being a research assistant would give an opportunity to learn new skills and grow as a researcher myself.
Q: What was the most rewarding part of your time as a research assistant?
Hearing my team’s motivations behind what drew them to pursuing this project made this experience rewarding for me.
Gary McMurtrie ‘21
Study Title: Harm Assessment for Reduction and Prevention (HARP) Study
Gary McMurtrie ‘21
Professor: Nichole Bayliss PhD (Associate Professor and Program Coordinator for Psychology)
● Gary used software programs to code and analyze patterns between participant responses about consent and relationship experiences in the Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 iterations of the HARP Study.
Q: What drew you to this project in particular?
There were two main things that drew me to this project. First, I have a very strong relationship with Dr. Bayliss, and having enjoyed all of her lectures, I saw this research project as an opportunity to learn a lot under her tutelage. In addition, I saw this project as being an opportunity to actually engage the members of the Chatham community and hear their voices, which would lead to actual change.
Q: What are the contributions you’ve made that you’re most proud of?
Probably the contributions that I have made that I am most proud of is when I created a preliminary report detailing all of the quantitative and qualitative data that we had received in the Fall of 2020. Upon entering Chatham, I was generally fairly ambivalent and often uncomfortable when dealing with different software programs like SPSS and Excel, so being able to navigate myself throughout them and actually create a report of that magnitude was definitely something to be proud of.
Q: As your work as a research assistant comes to a close, what’s next for your summer?
Once summer research ends, I will still definitely have my hands full. I volunteer at UPMC Presbyterian once a week, am taking a summer course, and I am actually a summer research intern at the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM). At ASAM, I have been helping with literature reviews centering around ethnic and racial disparities related to access to and retention in substance use disorder (SUD) treatment programs and also the efficacy and feasibility of Telehealth, as this has been heavily utilized during the pandemic. Other than that, I will try to relax by reading books, watching movies, and hopefully going on some long hikes.
Q: What made you want to work as a research assistant?
I wanted to be a research assistant to simply continue the research that I have been a part of since last summer. I started out last summer as a member of a small team led by Dr. Bayliss; one of our main priorities was condensing the survey so that it was more feasible to complete and also attempting to incorporate questions that encapsulated the experiences of students during the pandemic, as that was a completely unprecedented situation. I continued working on the project in the Fall in my Capstone course with Dr. Bayliss, where I was tasked with ensuring survey functionality in Qualtrics and delivering weekly updates to the class about the data received in order to make sure that we were reaching everyone at Chatham through our recruitment efforts. In the spring, I engaged in individual research, where I prepared a preliminary report of the Fall 2020 data. So far, this research project has been constantly changing, so I knew that this summer would present new challenges and opportunities.
Q: What was the most rewarding part of your time as a research assistant?
I would say the most rewarding part of my time as a research assistant so far has been being able to hear the different voices of the Chatham community. So many participants provided us with a lot of helpful commentary on different contemporary issues and their own personal experiences; this has allowed me to analyze different issues from a different point of view and understand other people’s perspectives more effectively.
Mentorship is at the heart of Chatham’s summer research experience.
“ A hallmark of Chatham is that you get to have pretty close relationships with your faculty members, so if you know that a faculty member is working on stuff that is interesting to you, and you know maybe they talk about it in class, or you’ve read some things that they’ve worked on, you can do that as an independent study and work on some things. Almost nobody is going to turn down someone who is interested in helping out on research because there’s always something regardless of your skill level that you could be doing to help out.”
Want to explore research and other hands-on projects at Chatham? Dr. Jennie Sweet-Cushman says that self-motivated students should reach out to their professors to learn more about how to participate in research or independent study opportunities.