Projects
The Harvard Math Study |
A Fall 2023 Research Project
2023-2024
Report by: Monique Harrison & Allison Wiley
Year long study conducted in collaboration with the Harvard Math Department and a Senior Research Associate at Cornell University.
After much internal discussion about students’ initial math course decision-making (and potential mismatching), the Harvard Math Department proposed a research agenda to examine the ways students choose their introductory math courses and the overall experiences of students in their first math course. There is substantial research that early course experiences can have huge impacts on undergraduate pathways and major decision-making (Chambliss & Takacs, 2014). Undergraduate math is also a particularly fraught entry-point for students, as they are often calibrating their own performance against their peers, and making evaluations of their abilities (Harrison, Hernandez & Stevens, 2023). Students with identities most marginalized in mathematics (women, under-represented racial/ethnic minorities, and first-generation college students) are most sensitive to these comparisons (Goldin, 2015; Ellis et al. 2016, Sanabria & Penner, 2017).
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The Longevity and Resilience of Meritocracy during a crisis: How Students Value a College Degree.
2022-2023
This study was a project produced through the Sociology Honors Program as a senior thesis project at UCSD. It focused on the undergraduate experience throughout higher education during the Covid-19 pandemic. Framed by the theory of meritocracy, this study questions the role of college and a college degree in contemporary society and whether having a college degree still fulfills a particular function as a way for individuals to mobilize. Additionally, it explored the ways in which the pandemic influenced how students view the value of a college degree in the current economic and social landscape.
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Student Activism on Campus: Liberal and Conservative Students Perceptions of Campus Protests.
2022-2023
This study takes a deep look at liberal and conservative undergraduate students to reveal a relationship between protesting and student perceptions. This research sets out to explore what conditions liberal and conservative students set forth for successful campus protests and how they perceive protests that do not meet those conditions. Additionally, how these protests foster or hinder political engagement at a liberal arts college that is not considered to be a “hotbed of activism”.
Theoretical Approaches to Sports Violence: A Deep Dive
2021-2022
This collaborative project takes a look at how gender and sports violence are connected. We use Bourdieu's theory of the Habitus to explore the ways in which sports players experience and enact violence and how it is directly impacted by their gender. We particularly want to focus on the deep conditioning of gender norms in adolescence that leads to perceptions of violence within sports. What boys and girls learn in their youth directly translates into adulthood and we hope to see this through the occurrence of violence within sports. We believe that along with the social construction of gender, the Habitus plays an essential role in informing how gender and learning contribute to the understanding and enactment of sports violence.
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