FRC researchers were especially active and engaged at this year’s Undergraduate Research Symposium.
In the morning session for oral presentations, senior Sufiya Shazia and junior Anya Altangerel—both psychology majors—spoke about findings from their work with two separate FRC research projects. Shazia showcased data about how a mindful intervention in a preschool setting can reduce the risk of expulsion and improve teachers’ perceptions of and implicit assumptions about their students. (This mindful movement intervention is the same one that FRC demoed in March at the Champaign resource fair.) Then Altangerel introduced findings from FRC’s mixed-methods COVID study showing how social competence can mitigate the association between adverse childhood experiences and subsequent negative mental health outcomes in adolescents.
Meanwhile, at a concurrent poster session downstairs, freshman community health major Baani Parmar presented on work with a recently funded FRC project about how exposure to nature, music and mindful movement can serve as early childhood stress-coping strategies. Parmar’s poster featured findings from a scoping review on the effects of these three—nature, music and mindfulness—on social-emotional and executive functioning outcomes in early childhood. With this review completed, data collection is expected to begin this summer in the Christopher Hall Research Home.
The afternoon featured presentations from two groups of high school students who spent the semester in youth participatory action research (YPAR) programs. YPAR positions young people as co-researchers alongside adults like teachers, health educators, church elders or out-of-school time volunteers. The students come to agreement on an issue they would like to research that affects their communities, and then they select policy actions that might successfully intervene in the problem.
Students at the Pavilion Foundation School in Champaign chose to research the relationship between school safety and violence, asking what safety measures schools can take to reduce violence. Funded by the City of Champaign, students in this program examined these research questions from different perspectives. They questioned the importance of student discipline policies and practices, the physical infrastructure of Champaign high schools, the influence of community violence, and the impact of racial, ethnic and socioeconomic diversity.
For the second year in a row, URS featured students participating in YPAR at Kenneth D. Bailey Academy in Danville. Whereas last year’s group focused on the correlation between poverty and crime in their community, this year’s cohort chose to research the relationship between public housing and mental health in Vermilion County. The students discovered a lack of awareness in their communities about the definition of mental health and a belief that public housing and mental health are related. Their proposed action plans moving forward are disseminating a rap they recorded, turning their interviews into a podcast and circulating a digital poster. Their work was featured in a Sunday centerpiece in the Commercial-News.