Springing Into Spring Semester

I am back from winter break, and the Spring 2023 semester is in full swing. Recently, with the help of my faculty mentor, Dr. Kati Barahona-López from the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire (UWEC), I submitted the Summer Research Experiences for Undergraduates (SREU) through the Office of Research and Sponsored Program funding request.

Introducing My Faculty Advisor

Dr. Barahona-López is an assistant professor of Sociology at UWEC. She received her PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. At UWEC, she teaches three courses: Introduction to Sociology, U.S Race and Ethnicity, and a special topics course that examines youth development through a sociological framework.. I've taken her U.S Race and Ethnicity course which helped me examine the creation and development of race and ethnicity in the United States. These courses have an overarching theme about looking at life and situations through a critical lens. She finds great value in using students' experiences to inform their own learning.

My faculty advisor, Dr. Barahona-López.

I initially met Dr. Barahona-López when I enrolled in her online course on U.S Race and Ethnicity during the Spring 2021 semester. I found the course to be incredibly interesting because I began to think about topics of race, class, and gender, and how these issues deeply impact our lives. Our paths didn't cross again until Fall 2022 when she approached me one day while walking to class, and suggested that we schedule a meeting to touch base. During this meeting, she asked me to TA for her Introduction to Sociology, and I asked that she become my faculty McNair mentor. We decided to focus our research on investigating how pre-departure study abroad courses affect how students can articulate racial, class, and gender dynamics in the United States and abroad, if at all. In other words, the overarching question is: Do students consider these differences while going abroad?

The Grant Application

Filling out the SREU application was an interesting experience for me as I had never applied for a research grant before. I was glad that Dr. Barahona-López was able to help me out. I was stressed trying to ensure that we had everything in order to submit it. I wrote the initial draft, and she revised it and made appropriate edits to make it more professional and concise. I am thankful for her guidance. This application required us to narrow down our research specifically. We created a timeline to keep us on track to finish developing our project and be ready for the summer. The timeline will be useful for me as I tend to struggle when I don't have written and concrete deadlines.

So far, we are hoping to examine how people who decide to study abroad think about the social world around them, the social world they engage with during their study abroad, and how these two interact. Additionally, we are focusing on how students articulate the differences relating to race, class, and gender they experience here in the United States, and what differences they expect to experience while they are abroad.

Future Planning

There are a few things that I still need to learn. For example, I will need to familiarize myself with the Qualtrics survey and report software, R-studio for statistical analysis, and Dedoose for analyzing qualitative and mixed methods research. I will need to set aside extra time over the course of the semester before June to get the proper training with each application.

Edited April 6th, 2023.