Undergraduate Research in Psychology
Faculty Members with Research Opportunities
for Undergraduates
Dr. Amit Almor
E-mail: almor@sc.edu
Office: Barnwell 460, Phone: (803) 777-4302
Website: http://people.cas.sc.edu/almor/
Description: Aging related impairments such as Alzheimer's dementia provide an opportunity to examine the relation between language and memory processes. We are currently comparing several areas of language and memory processing in young, healthy elderly, and patients with Huntington Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, and Alzheimer's Disease.
My other major area of research is referential processing which addresses the question of why do we sometimes choose to use a name, in other times a pronoun, and in yet other times a category term? Our research suggests that when people process referential expressions they show a balance between the processing cost of these expressions and the discourse function they serve. The processing cost of referential expressions is related, among other things, to memory interference. Pronouns minimize this interference and in our view are the solution language"invented" to reduce the cost of reference. We are using reading measures, eye tracking, memory tasks, and neuroimaging to study referential processing.
Responsibilities: Beginning undergraduate researchers are typically involved in running experiments, preparing stimuli for experiments, and participate in data coding and analysis. More advanced undergraduate researchers work on their own projects. All lab members take part in weekly lab meetings in which we discuss our and related research.
Requirements: To work in the lab you will most likely enroll in PSYC 399 or 498. Normally you will have to meet the following requirements:
Sophomore, Junior, or Senior
GPA of 3.0 or greater
Interest or background in psychology and/or language
Be able to be in the lab for a minimum of 9 hours a week
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Dr. Cheryl A. Armstead
E-mail: armstead@gwm.sc.edu
Office: Barnwell 429, Phone: (803) 777-5756
Website: http://www.cas.sc.edu/psyc/facdocs/armstead.html
Student Stress Study
Description: Have you ever encountered stress as a student? Sure you have!! This independent study opportunity will focus on discovering the physiological and psychological effects of stress among USC students.
Responsibilities: Skills in survey administration and laboratory blood pressure monitoring will be developed in this course. You'll also learn about blood pressure and EKG monitoring. This is a good experience for students interested in health psychology, pre-med, or public health.
Requirements: Students must be reliable, hard working,and mature. Independent study students must also have experience interacting with culturally diverse populations. Health related experience is necessary.
ICSC: Behavioral Surveillance of Risky Sexual Behaviors
Description: This independent study opportunity will focus on factors influencing risky sexual behavior among young, lower SES individuals in the community.
Responsibilities: Students will assist in collection and coding of anonymous information related to sexually transmitted diseases risk behaviors.
Skills in survey administration and community health promotion will be developed in this course. Students will be introduced to the workings of public health agencies.
Requirements: Students must be responsible, mature undergraduates. Independent study students must have experience interacting with
culturally diverse populations. Health related experience is highly desirable. Since sexual behavior is being assessed, potential independent study students
must evidence the ability to handle sensitive issues in a confidential fashion.
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Dr. Gordon C. Baylis
E-mail: gordon@sc.edu
Office: Barnwell 237-C, Phone: (803) 777-5480
Website: http://www.cas.sc.edu/psyc/facdocs/baylis.html
Infants in a Lumpy World
We live in a lumpy world - one that is divided into things and the background space. How do we decide what parts of our visual experience
corresponds to things, and what corresponds to the gaps between things? This skill is so good that we scarcely realize that we do it.
When do we learn this? Or is it innate? Experiments on infants and young children will examine the origins of this figure-ground segmentation.
What Makes YOU So Special?
People have different cognitive skills. Sometimes skills vary with personality traits or with gender. We will carry out experiments to
understand what perceptual skills vary between people, and how we might predict the attentional and perceptual ability of people.
Processing Complex Visual Information
What do we see at a glance? What takes a second look? What is important? What should we ignore? Opportunities are available for
undergraduates to work in a laboratory to explore what makes sense in the vast amount of complex visual information.
This research involves undergraduate subjects, and occasionally patients with brain damage who have problems processing visual information.
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Dr. Shauna M. Cooper
E-mail: smcooper@sc.edu
Office: Barnwell 554, Phone: (803) 777-6859
Website: http://www.cas.sc.edu/psyc/facdocs/cooper.html
Parenting Processes in African American Families: Implications for Adolescent Psychological and School Adjustment
Description: My research focuses on socialization and parenting practices in African American families. In particular,
I am interested in how gender may influence parenting and socialization in African American families as well as how this may influence
child and adolescent psychological and school outcomes. Currently, I am conducting an investigation exploring father-daughter relationships
in African American families. In particular, this study is exploring how fathers’ socialization practices, parenting style and involvement
are associated with African American girls’ psychological and educational outcomes.
Responsibilities: The independent study will involve approximately 8-9 hrs/week of lab work on the DADDS Study ("Dad Active in
Daughters Developing Successfully"). Responsibilities include assistance in participant recruitment, administering questionnaires to parents and
adolescents, entering data, conducting literature searches. Students are encouraged to do an APA style research paper on a lab-related project
(e.g., lit review, results, discussion) and submit for publication. Also, students are required to participate in weekly lab meetings.
Requirements: A cumulative GPA of 3.0 or better is preferred; Previous background or interest in psychology; Interest in issues related
to African American families and children.
Emerging Adulthood among African American Youth
Description: Emerging adulthood, defined as a distinct developmental period (18-25 years of age), has been
characterized as a time of identity exploration and transition for many youth. This independent study explores emerging adulthood
among African American youth. Using University and community-based samples, this investigation explores African American youths’ views
about adult responsibilities, including familial responsibilities, perceived gender roles, beliefs about community/civic involvement and
career-related/educational goals. Additionally, this study explores contextual stressors that may adversely influence adjustment during
this period (psychological and school/work adjustment) as well as culturally-specific and developmentally-appropriate protective factors.
Responsibilities: The independent study will involve approximately 6-8 hrs/week of lab work. Responsibilities include assistance
in participant recruitment, questionnaire administration, data entry, conducting literature searches. Also, students are required to participate in weekly lab meetings.
Requirements: A cumulative GPA of 3.0 or better is preferred; Previous background or interest in psychology; Interest in issues related to Psychology;
African American families and children. Students are encouraged to do an APA style research paper on a lab-related project (e.g., lit review, results, discussion) and
submit for publication.
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Dr. Kate Flory
E-mail: floryk@gwm.sc.edu
Office: Barnwell 528-c, Phone: (803) 777-4304
Website: http://www.cas.sc.edu/psyc/facdocs/flory.html
Description: My current research examines why adolescents with ADHD or depression are at risk for cigarette smoking.
Responsibilities: Undergraduate students working with me are responsible for helping to conduct assessments with adolescents ages 11-17 and their parents, which involves spending 2-3 hours with each family, administering tests, tasks, and questionnaires. Students also help with office work such as entering data and making photocopies.
Requirements: Undergraduate students interested in working in my lab must be available in the evenings and/or on weekends and should have some interest/experience in working with children or adolescents. A GPA of 3.5 or higher is preferred.
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Dr. Tawanda M. Greer
E-mail: tmgreer@sc.edu
Office: Barnwell 460, Phone: (803) 777-4302
Website: http://www.cas.sc.edu/psyc/facdocs/greer.html
Description: The two independent study students will work on a project entitled, The Multidimensional Inventory of
African American Functioning (MIAAF), which is a psychological measure that is being created by Dr. Greer. This measure is being
created to assist clinicians in providing culturally competent mental health services to African American adults. The measure consists of
6 subscales that capture biopsychosocial factors that are related to the overall functioning of African American adult clients
(e.g., social support, general health status, perceived oppression, self-concept). It is being designed for the purpose of deriving culturally
appropriate treatment plans and interventions.
Responsibilities: Independent study students will be involved in sorting and rating items for each of the 6 subscales.
Thus, students will play a very important role in helping to determine which items will be included in the pilot version of the measure.
Requirements: 2 independent study students in Psychology
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Dr. Ben Hankin
E-mail: hankin@sc.edu
Office: Barnwell 514, Phone: (803) 777-5756
Website: http://www.cas.sc.edu/psyc/facdocs/hankin.html
Description: Dr. Hankin studies the development of depression and co-occurring
emotional and behavioral problems among children and adolescents.
Responsibilities: Interacting with families and children to collect questionnaire data and
conduct clinical interviews with youth. Enter data. Participate in lab meetings to discuss current scientific issues.
Requirements: minimum 1-year requirement. Minimum 3.2 GPA
Contact: Catherine Cheely, cheely@gwm.sc.edu or Annie Wright, patriciaannwright@yahoo.com.
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Dr. Scott Huebner
E-mail: huebner@sc.edu
Office: Barnwell 505, Phone: (803) 777-3591
Website: http://www.cas.sc.edu/psyc/facdocs/huebner.html
Description: Dr. Huebner's research focuses on child and adolescent positive psychological well-being and school engagement. Research on the nature, determinants, and outcomes associated with students' positive social-emotional well-being and school engagement.
Responsibilities: Time commitments, nature of responsibilities, and credit hours can be negotiated. Depending upon interests and skills, responsibilities might include such activities as collecting data in schools, entering data into computers, writing a review of the literature, or co-authoring conference presenations and/or manuscripts for publication.
Requirements: A cumulative GPA of 3.0 or better is preferred.
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Dr. Sandra Kelly
E-mail: sandra-kelly@sc.edu
Office: Barnwell 461, Phone: (803) 777-7610
Website: http://people.cas.sc.edu/sjkelly/index.html
Description: Dr. Sandra Kelly offers an independent study investigating the effects of alcohol exposure during development on the central nervous system and behavior. The research uses a rat model of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. There is a particular focus on the alterations of the neural substates of social behavior and possible interventions to ameliorate these effects.
This independent study is available during summer sessions and the Fall and Spring semester. This independent study is excellent experience for someone planning on going into graduate school in Behavioral Neuroscience. The student will be involved in all aspects of the projects including exposing rats to alcohol during the prenatal and early postnatal period, behavioral testing of infant and adult rats, neurochemical assays, and anatomical techniques.
Responsibilities: The independent study will involve approximately 9 hours per week of lab work and some of the work may be on weekends. Readings from the scientific literature and a term paper will be required.
Requirements:The student should have already completed or be taking Psychology 460 or SCCC 330P (Biological Psychology or Neuroscience) and should plan on doing 6 credit hours of independent study over two semesters.
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Dr. John Richards
E-mail: richards-john@sc.edu
Office: Barnwell 512, Phone: (803) 777-2079
Website: JERLab.psych.sc.edu
Description: My research is on infant attention. I am interested in changes in attention to pictures and sounds in infants from 3 to 12 months of age. My experiments involve using heart rate as an index of attentiveness, and many use EEG or MRI to examine brain concomitants of attention.
Responsibilities: The responsibilities include contacting parents to bring infants in for
psychological experiments; helping to test the infants in the experiments; computer-based editing of ECG, EEG, eye movements, and judgments of fixation. Students in independent studies are required to do an APA style
paper describing the research, results from subjects that were tested, and a discussion.
Requirements: I accept students to work with me for one year (two semesters). This is because the training and timing needed to do a study takes this amount of time. I only accept students who want to enroll for an independent study and do an APA style paper describing their results. Generally this results in a published paper.
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Dr. Brad Smith
E-mail: smithbrad@sc.edu
Office: Barnwell 528-b, Phone: (803) 777-4294
Website: Scstudentexcellence.org
Description:I am trained as a clinical psychologist, but my major research and teaching often overlap
with school psychology. My major research interest areas are (a) middle-school students with learning and behavior problems,
(b) parenting interventions for middle-school students, (c) substance abuse prevention, especially among college students, and
(d) dissemination of school-based interventions with the assistance of service-learning students.
Dozens of undergraduates, including four Honors College Students, from USC have been involved in independent study research in my lab.
I am in the process of writing grants to pursue research on (a) parenting interventions, and (b) stimulant abuse among college students.
However, my most active research area right now is the Challenging Horizons Program (CHP), which is a program for middle-school students
with learning and behavior problems. The CHP provides a wide variety of opportunities for research initiated by USC undergraduates.
Most of the students who have completed research in the CHP have been accepted into graduate school. This is often very good research
as indicated by the fact that students who completed research in CHP won awards at Discovery Day in 2006 and 2007. Also, several
undergraduates have published (or are in the process of publishing) research completed in my lab as undergraduates.
Responsibilities: Students who work in the CHP, typically begin by working as a staff member in the after-school program.
The CHP is organized around vertical teams, such that entry-level staff are mentored by returning staff, who are mentored by graduate students,
who are mentored by faculty. Thus, there is a strong opportunity for advancement. Most returning staff develop independent study projects.
Entry level staff usually take Psychology 489, the Community Psychology Practicum. After about 18 hours of training, they begin working
directly with middle-school students in the CHP about 8 hours a week. Returning CHP staff take independent study classes. Some returning
students elect to complete case studies while enrolled in independent study (i.e., Psych 498). The students most likely to attend Ph.D.
programs complete a two-semester sequence of student-initiated research (Psych 598 and 599). The first semester usually involves designed
the study and the second involves collecting, analyzing, and reporting data.
Requirements: Students must apply for a position in my lab similar to applying for a job. This includes writing a
statement of purpose, completing a job application, and submitting references. Applicants are interviewed by CHP staff and assigned
to duties commensurate to their skills and experience.
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Dr. Suzanne Swan
E-mail: swan@sc.edu
Office: Barnwell 553, Phone: (803) 777-2558
Website: http://www.cas.sc.edu/psyc/facdocs/swan.html
Description: The college years are, unfortunately, a high-risk time for women to experience sexual assault and dating violence.
Over the course of a college career, up to 25% of women may experience a sexual assault and 45% of students (both male and female) may experience
intimate partner violence. Other types of interpersonal violence, including stalking, bar fights, etc., are also common on college campuses.
We believe that violence against women is not solely a “women’s issue”. Rather, violence against women and men cannot end unless men take an
active role in stopping it. Though only a minority of men engage in violence against women, all men can have an influence on the culture and
environment that perpetuates men's violence against women. Changing Carolina is a preventive intervention conducted with male college students
to reduce intimate partner violence and sexual violence against women, as well as other forms of interpersonal violence. Although the primary
target audience is men, a number of female students are also involved in Changing Carolina.
Responsibilities: Undergraduate student researchers are typically involved in collecting data from students who participate in the
Changing Carolina class and other programs, as well as data coding, entry, and analysis. Students also help to get the word out about Changing Carolina
to other students, and may assist in developing grant proposals and other projects.
Requirements:Usually, sophomore, junior, or senior; GPA of 3.0 or better; interest or background in psychology; interest in issues related to violence and violence prevention.
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Dr. Doug Wedell
E-mail: wedell@sc.edu
Office: Barnwell 462, Phone: (803) 777-4258
Website: http://www.cas.sc.edu/psyc/facdocs/wedell.html
Description: Have you ever wondered how people make the decisions that they do? For instance, why do some people prefer
risky options to safer ones, or how do people choose one apartment from all of the available apartments in
the city? In our lab, we explore the issues involved in judgment and decision making situations like these.
In particular, we seek to develop cognitive models of the process of decision making in order to better understand
the process and possibly improve it. Past and current issues explored in our lab include: What strategies do
people use to make decisions? How do consumers choose products? Does attractiveness depend on your context?
How do people feel about risky decisions? We are currently seeking an ambitious junior or senior with an interest
in decision making to be a research assistant.
Responsibilities: Responsibilities would include the following: library research, construction of stimulus materials, analysis of
data, collecting data for ongoing projects, and the development of new research issues. Your creativity and hard
work will be rewarded with research experience and the development of your own ideas, both of which are invaluable
for a Psychology major seeking admission to graduate school.
Requirements: To work in the lab you will most likely enroll in PSYC 399 or 498. You should be a
Sophomore, Junior, or Senior with a GPA of 3.0 or greater.
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Dr. Dawn Wilson
E-mail: dkwilson@sc.edu
Office: Barnwell 512, Phone: (803) 777-8032
Website: http://www.cas.sc.edu/psyc/facdocs/wilson.html
498 independent study - Project PATH
Description: Students enrolled in this course (3 credits) will participate in Project PATH
(Positive Action for Today's health), a randomized community-based trial. The overall goal of the project is to determine
whether a community based program can improve overall health (such as blood pressure and physical activity levels) in underserved African American
adults. Communities that have agreed to participate will receive one of the following 1) a general health education program 2) a police patrolled
walking program or 3) a police patrolled walking program plus a social marketing campaign.
Description: Students will assist with various intervention/process/recruitment tasks related to Project PATH, which may
include tracking participants of the program, updating contact information for the families, aiding in recruitment, doing follow-up calls and
evaluating program implementation.
Contact: Sara Mijares, mijares@mailbox.sc.edu or
Hannah Lawman, hlawman86@gmail.com
498 independent study - Project ACT
Description: Students enrolled in this course (3 credits) will participate in Project ACT (Active by Choice Today),
a randomized school-based trial. The goal of ACT is to evaluate the efficacy of an innovative student-centered after-school program
for promoting lifestyle changes in physical activity among underserved adolescents.
Responsibilities: Students will assist with various intervention tasks related to Project ACT, which may include
tracking children with low attendance to the program, updating contact information for the children's families, and evaluating program implementation.
Contact: Michelle Segal, segal@sc.edu
SSP position
Description: This is a paid position that would involve conducting one-on-one interviews with sixth grade students at different schools in the state who are currently enrolled in the ACT after-school physically activity program. A team of 4-5 people go out to schools three times a week from November-February on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday afternoons. During the interviews, we ask the students different questions such as how they stay physically active and how they can get their friends to be physically active. This component of the project is referred to as Strategic Self-Presentation (SSP).
Contact: Michelle Segal, segal@sc.edu
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Research Experience - Exercise Science Class
Shawn Youngstedt, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Exercise Science
Arnold School of Public Health
Phone: (803) 777-9929
Dr. Shawn Youngstedt is looking for 2 undergraduate students interested in gaining research experience
to take an independent study EXSC class.
Responsibilities: The duties of these students will include:
- Learning basic research skills
- Learning basic science laboratory skills
- Working on a cancer metastasis animal model
- Learning sleep research techniques, including EEG in animals
- Working with sleep deprivation techniques
- Working with exercise training in animals
- Working with psychological techniques in animals
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