The IDEALS Lab Turns Research Into Action
Sydney SeNay, MSCP '24, poses with her research poster at an American Psychological Association conference in Seattle. (Courtesy of Sydney SeNay)
When Michael Cadaret, his colleagues, and his students do research in the IDEALS Lab, they aren’t just doing it for the sake of knowledge.
“We’re doing this research project, but it’s research with an aim to change institutional structures, research, or activity that could be more prosocial in nature,” said Cadaret, the program coordinator for Chatham’s Masters in Counseling Psychology degree.
“If we’re advocating for marginalized groups, how do we use the knowledge we get from research and as practicing psychologists to make that happen?” he said.
The IDEALS Lab was founded by Cadaret and Lei Wang. The lab’s name, an acronym that stands for “Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Activism for Liberation and Social change,” gives an idea of what the lab is about.
Michael Cadaret is the MSCP program coordinator and co-founded the IDEALS Lab.
Their research has included looks into the experience of Black students in STEM programs, how financial stress affects college students, and Define It!, a program aimed at changing the culture around sexual assault and helping people be more conscious bystanders.
Sydney SeNay, MSCP ’24, helped put together the Define It! study. She even traveled to Seattle in August to a conference hosted American Psychological Association.
“What really interested me about the lab and what drew me in the most was the Define It! Initiative,” she said. “Definte It! is trying to get participants to not only define rape culture and sexual assault, but it’s trying to create bystander awareness around the culture of sexual assault.”
“A lot of what we do is furthering conversations outside of the research initiative,” she added. “You have a research initiative that is focused around inclusion and diversity. You then have these conversations [with research participants] that are very fruitful at the time, and these conversations continue into participants’ lives and they can further the initiative.”
To do the research, SeNay and other researchers asked undergraduate students questions about their idea of what rape culture is, and how they were impacted by it.
“You have to let participants think through their answers as they’re answering them,” SeNay said, “and give them the space to think about exactly what these things are, because these are difficult concepts.”
Questions included things like “What expectations do you think there are in sexual relationships?” or “How do you know you have consent in a sexual situation?”
Last spring semester, the group held a sexual assault awareness event at Chatham. “The best part of Define It! is putting responsibility back on the individual and saying, ‘This is a big problem, and you may not be able to solve it today, but what can you do that can make it even a little bit better?’” SeNay said.
Cadaret said he likes that IDEALS has moved into programming based on evidence from the lab’s research. There are ongoing projects students can join, or they can approach the lab with their own ideas for research that fits under the IDEALS mission.
“We’ll do what we can to make that happen or support them in doing that research,” he said. It’s reflective of the values of the MSCP program and the research done by those in the program, Cadaret said.
Chatham also offers a Master of Arts in Psychology (MAP) degree, a Doctor of Counseling Psychology (PsyD) program, and a psychology BA for undergraduates. Learn more at chatham.edu.