University of Massachusetts Lowell
Center for Women and Work - Emerging Scholars Program
2013-2014 Project Descriptions
Urmitapa Dutta, Psychology: “Reframing Everyday Violence from the Perspectives of
Youth: A Participatory Action Research Project”
This participatory action research project will explore local youth perspectives on everyday
violence in Lowell. The city of Lowell represents a complex cultural landscape. It is home to a
socio-economically, culturally, and ethnically diverse population of young people who have
varying identifications with their communities. This project will identify and the myriad
manifestations of violence experienced by local youth and the larger sociocultural and
institutional factors implicated in those experiences. The project consists of three main phases.
The first phase involves data collection. During this phase we will work with youth participants
recruited from Lowell Community Health Center’s Teen Block to identify some of the key issues
related to youth and community violence in Lowell. This phase will rely primarily on two
methods of data elicitation – storytelling and photovoice. The second phase of the project is data
analysis. An outcome of the analysis phase would be a ground-up theorization of everyday
violence experienced by youth in Lowell. This theorization will integrate three major
dimensions: i) youth experiences of violence; ii) the contexts implicated in violence, and iii) the
protective factors and community strengths that mitigate it. The third phase involves
dissemination. During this phase we will work on disseminating the findings of the project in the
local community (e.g., a community photo exhibit) and in scholarly venues.
Skills desired from student:
 Self-starter, organized, and reliable
 Familiarity with library research and
online databases
 Good communication skills
 Interest in issues of youth and social
change
 Knowledge of Word and Powerpoint
 Excitement about community-based
research
 Ability to work collaboratively
Potential project tasks:
 Assistance with literature searches
 Conducting ethnographic observations for
youth sessions
 Qualitative analysis of data
 Assistance with organizing a community
photo exhibit to disseminate results locally
 Attending research group meetings
 Drafting components of papers or
presentations
Ashleigh Hillier, Psychology: “Autism Spectrum Issues in College”
Professor Hillier’s project is an investigation of the concerns parents have regarding their child
with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) attending college. We want to know what challenges
parents predict their son/daughter will experience in college and where their strengths will lie,
what supports they think their child will need, what they look for in a college, how much they
think their child understands about college life, etc. This study will give us greater understanding
of the fears, goals, and expectations parents of those with ASD have as their child transitions to
college life. This is an important topic given the dramatically increasing numbers of young adults
with ASD now attending university. Universities, families, and individuals with ASD themselves
are looking for ways to better serve the needs of those with ASD and enhance their success in
higher education.
Skills desired from student:
 Good communication skills, outgoing, confident personality
 Ability to critically evaluate research and synthesize findings
 Conscientiousness, precision, self-motivated
 Strong writing skills
 An interest in autism spectrum disorders
 A desire to work with adolescent and young adults on the autism spectrum
Potential project tasks:
 Conducting telephone interviews
 Conducting a literature review
 Analyzing qualitative data
 Helping to write up a research paper
 Participate in Professor Hillier’s college preparation mentoring program for those
with ASD
 Participate in Professor Hillier’s music program for those with ASD to get some direct
experience working with those with ASD
 Presentation at Student Research Symposium and potentially other conferences
Morgan Marietta, Political Science: “Dueling Facts in American Democracy:
One Nation and Two Realities”
The great senator and scholar Pat Moynihan once suggested that each side of the partisan debate
could have their own opinions but not their own facts. Events have proven him wrong. Dueling
Facts in American Democracy argues that our combative current politics are shaped by distinct
perceptions of facts rather than merely differences of opinion. As our public values have
polarized over the last decades, facts have followed. We now inhabit a dual-fact environment
characterized by co-existing and competing perceptions of reality rather than a base of shared
assumptions. Perhaps the most prominent of these factual disputes are the threat from climate
change, the origins of sexual orientation, the continuing prevalence of racism, the significance of
the national debt, and the degree of threat from terrorism. The causes and consequences of dualfact politics can be divided between the clear and the controversial. Clearly it is related to our
increasing polarization of ideology, culture, and media. The more controversial cause is the
erosion of authority—especially of the university—which has lost its status as a trusted arbiter of
reality. The clear consequences are mutual misunderstanding and mistrust, as well as a
decreasing consensus on national problems to be addressed. The controversial consequence is the
permanence of irreconcilable narratives, neither of which can be firmly established or refuted.
This means that the history of our recent politics in the era of George W. Bush and Barack
Obama can no longer be told in one narrative that both sides will accept, but only in two
competing storylines with an eroding common ground.
Skills desired from student:
 Strong interest in politics
 Interest in psychology and learning research approaches such as content analysis and
experimental methods
Potential project tasks:
 Content analysis of the distinct fact-check organizations like PolitiFact.com and
FactCheck.org to examine how they differ in their assertions of reality
 Historical study of competing political narratives over the past two presidencies
 Series of experiments to illicit the psychological responses to competing facts and
narratives
Marlowe Miller, English and Gender Studies: “The Representation of Domestic Space in
Novels by Women Authors”
This project will explore the representation of domestic space in the novels of several modernist
novels written by women as a way of exploring the changing representation of gender roles in
the modernist period. Virginia Woolf famously said that “On or about December 1910, human
character changed....” Relations between ''masters and servants, husbands and wives, parents
and children'' shifted, she wrote, ''and when human relations change there is at the same time a
change in religion, conduct, politics and literature.'' Assuming this shift did happen over the
course of the modernist period, and that it did, indeed, manifest in the literature of the time, this
project will explore reactions to domestic space as it reflected or resisted modernist change in
gender relations and domestic arrangements.
Skills desired from student:
 Research skills for conducting research reviews and collecting relevant secondary sources
 Interest in learning and working with NVIVO data analysis software
 Analytic skills to review primary texts in order to identify and record relevant passages
 Organizational skills for coding passages of text as related to specific themes, topics, or
images
 Skills of close-reading and analyzing literature for literary elements (theme, figurative
language, symbolism, repetition, etc.)
Potential project tasks:
 A literature review to identify other research on this specific topic
 Coming up with a code with which to analyze texts to help to determine ways to
catalogue textual passages that reflect domestic space in other than passing ways
 Careful review of about a dozen novels to analyze the representation of domestic space
within each
 A review of the broader topic of theories about material culture as explored in related
disciplines (cultural anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies)
Melissa Morabito, Criminal Justice & Criminology: “Gender and Gendered Institutions:
A Biographical Exploration of Women’s Experiences in Law Enforcement”
In 1972, women comprised as little as 2% percent of sworn officers and current estimates
indicate that women comprise only 11.3% of all police officers (Hickman and Reeves, 2006).
The employment data further indicate that the hiring and retention of women has stalled
(Lonsway et al., 2002) which greatly reduces the likelihood of advancing women through the
ranks and creates a “leaking pipeline” of qualified female candidates (Bailyn, 2003). In 2001[1],
women comprised 7.3 percent of top command positions in large agencies and only 3.8 percent
in smaller agencies (Lonsway et al. 2002). Of central concern, is the fact that more than half of
all police agencies report that no women hold high-level positions (Lonsway et al. 2002). These
employment trends suggest the presence of systemic social and institutional barriers that
negatively affect the retention and advancement of women in policing. Further exploration and
explanation is necessary to better understand the experiences of female officers. The current
project involves using a biographical approach to broaden the state of knowledge in the field and
give voice to women working as part of an industry where their values and stories have long
been stifled, misunderstood or ignored. To date, 36 interviews ranging from 1-3 hours in length
have been conducted and transcribed. During the interviews, female officers are asked about the
life course of their careers. Currently, there is a long list of female officers who would like to be
interviewed. I would like to work with a student-scholar conducting interviews, transcribing, and
analyzing data.
Skills desired from student:
 Organized & reliable
 Interest in qualitative research
 Willing to learn about policing
 Knowledge of NVIVO desirable but not required
Potential project tasks:
 Complete IRB human subjects research ethics training
 Conducting Interviews
 Transcription and analysis of qualitative data
 Presenting data at an academic conference.
Carole Salmon, Cultural Studies: “The Franco-American French Language and Culture in
the Collective Memory”
Professor Carole Salmon’s research project in sociolinguistics specifically focuses on two main
Francophone communities in the United States: the Cajuns in Louisiana and the FrancoAmericans in New England. In the Fall of 2011, Salmon gathered a sociolinguistics audio corpus
of Franco-American French and Franco-American English across the six states of New England.
This audio corpus is now named the Sociolinguistics Corpus of Franco-American French and
English (2011). It contains 126 interviews, gathered from 63 speakers: 63 interviews in FrancoAmerican French and 63 in Franco-American English, since each speaker has been interviewed
twice. This database is currently the only one covering the six states of New England with
French interviews led by an interviewer who is a member of the Franco-American community
himself. Therefore, this corpus will undoubtedly serve as a unique sample of speech production.
Beyond its sociolinguistic use, this corpus already plays an important role in the preservation of
Franco-American French language and culture in the collective memory as this variety of French
is rapidly disappearing. I am interested in participating in the Emerging Scholars Program to
continue to work closely with a student-scholar on the analysis of the data contained in this
specific corpus.
Skills desired from student:
 A student who speaks French fluently OR an English-speaking student who can focus on
the interviews in English
 Organized
 Knowledge of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and some notion of statistics
 An interest in discovering what sociolinguists do
Potential project tasks:
 Transcription of 12 interviews: 2 interviews per state (1 man and 1 woman)
 Qualitative and/or quantitative analysis of interview data
 Presentation at Student Research Symposium and potentially other conferences
Richard Serna, Psychology: “Analysis of Online Training Methods in Behavioral
Intervention for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders”
Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) are behavioral-neurological disorders, typically diagnosed
before the age of three, that profoundly affect the young child’s ability to communicate, develop
language, form social relationships, and respond appropriately to their environments. DiscreteTrial Training (DTT) is a common instructional method used by special education teachers,
paraprofessionals, teacher aides and parents to teach children with autism and other
developmental disabilities a wide array of fundamental pre-academic and daily living skills
needed to foster greater life independence. The DTT method is a very precise one; it requires
practitioners to follow a prescribed set of steps to accomplish the learning goal. It is widely
recognized that there currently exists a critical shortage of practitioners that are well versed in
DTT and related methods. Practitioner training typically progresses from classroom instruction
to supervised hands-on experience, in which trainees work directly with children who have
special learning needs. The extent to which trainees are prepared for and will succeed in the
hands-on training phase depends largely on the quality of the classroom instruction. We have
developed an online training package to teach DTT. As part of the larger evaluation of that
package, I have begun a research program here at UML to determine the extent to which
computer-based learning will transfer (generalize) to live teaching performance. Using a
combination of educational video, video demonstrations and Flash®-based simulation exercises
presented via computer, UML college-student participants will be taught the fundamental
elements of how to implement DTT to teach simple tasks. The objective of this research is to
determine whether the computer training will result in subsequent accurate live performance with
a "student" (a college-student experimenter playing the part of a child learner).
Research conducted with an ES student during the 2012-2013 academic year demonstrated
overwhelmingly that the computer-based DTT training does transfer to live performance.
However, it is not known precisely what aspects of the training were responsible for the effects
observed. Thus, an important new question has emerged: What is the relative contribution of
linear video vs. simulation exercises in the transfer of skills to live performance? Preliminary
studies concerning this question are ongoing, but this is the question that will be explored in
depth during the 2013-2014 academic year.
Skills desired from student:
 Interest in and knowledge of Autism Spectrum Disorders
 Knowledge of fundamental principles of learning
 Good observation skills
 Good organizational skills
 Willingness to accommodate participants' early or late schedules

It would be ideal if the student partner has taken or is concurrently taking Learning and
Behavior (47.312) and/or Clinical Seminar in Autism (47.475). These courses provide a
basic understanding of both ASDs and behavior analysis and methodology.
Potential project tasks:
 Meetings to discuss the rationale of study, research design and protocol
 Contribute to IRB approval
 Literature search
 One-on-one data collection with participants
 Data coding and analysis
 Dissemination of findings through posters and/or presentations
 Preparation of elements of a manuscript
Jana Sladkova, Psychology: “New Migrants from Central Europe in New England:
Migration Patterns”
Massachusetts and New England in general draw immigrants from all over the world. While
much research has been conducted with various immigrant groups such as the Irish, Greek,
Haitian, Chinese, or Cambodian in the region, very little is known about other more “invisible”
immigrants who come from predominantly white Eastern/Central European countries. There is
small body of work on Czechs and Slovaks who came to the United States between 1860-1920
we could not find almost any current research on more recent Czech/Slovak immigrants in the
U.S. To start filling this void, Professor Sladkova proposed a project that will focus on post
Velvet Revolution (1989) Czech and Slovak immigrants in New England. The Ministry of
Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic states that there are approximately 2,000,000 people of
Czech ancestry in the United States. Data for New England are very hard to find but according to
Zip Atlas, there are at least 30,000 immigrants from the Czech or Slovak Republics. In the first
phase of the research project, she would like to start “mapping” who they are, what they do, how
they contribute both to their home country and to the local society, economically and otherwise,
etc. To this end she plans to recruit 30 adult participants through the Czech and Slovak
Association in Boston as well as PI’s personal connections (snowball technique) and do in-depth
interviews with them. Then, she will conduct a focus group with 8 people self-selected from the
interviewed participants. Lastly, based on the results of these two steps, Professor Sladkova will
create a draft of a survey, which she would like to utilize in the next phase of the project. Upon
the completion of the survey draft, she will hold another focus group during which the
participants will fill the survey out and provide her with feedback so that the tool can be
improved before implementation.
Skills desired from student:
 Some knowledge/interest qualitative (or mixed) research
 Knowledge of word, excel, PPT; SPSS and or Nvivo a plus
 Interested in immigration issues
 Interested in Eastern European immigrants a plus
 Able to work on a team
 Be flexible and yet organized
 Good writer a plus
Potential Project Tasks:
 IRB proposal writing
 Help with recruitment
 Preparing interview design
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Transcribing interviews in English
Co-facilitating focus groups
Helping with survey design
Presentation of research at a conference, coauthoring an article
Tommaso Tempesti, Economics: “The Impact of International Trade on the
Labor Market”
Professor Tempesti’s research focuses on the impact of international trade on the labor market.
Previous studies have devoted a lot of attention to the effect of trade on wages. Usually the
measure of wages that is used is the reported monetary salary. However, other relevant
dimensions of compensation also include benefits such as pension and health insurance. These
components may be a substantial portion of total compensation. In his project, he aims at
studying the effect of trade on non-monetary dimensions of total compensation by combining
existing longitudinal datasets on U.S. workers with trade data. Professor Tempesti is interested in
the Emerging Scholars program because he believes that his research could benefit from the help
of a good student. Professor Tempesti also believes that the program would allow the student to
learn valuable skills that s/he can use either in graduate school or in a profession that require data
analysis. He has previously supervised a student on his Honors thesis; advised a senior as to
graduate school; provided letters of support and recommendation for students who have helped
him in his research.
Skills desired from student:
 Knowledge of Stata, a statistical software, or willingness to learn it quickly
 Comfort with some programming and data analysis
 Knowledge of economics is a plus
Potential project tasks:
 Download datasets
 Enter the data in Stata
 Prepare the data for analysis
 Prepare descriptive statistics on the data
 Read some of the literature related to the hypothesis of interest
John Wooding, Political Science and Economic and Social Development of Regions:
“An in-depth Look at the Life of Noted Pacifist and Advocate of Non-Violence,
Richard Gregg”
Professor John Wooding’s research project involves a study of the noted pacifist and advocate of
non-violence, Richard Gregg. Gregg studied with Gandhi and was influential on the thinking of
Martin Luther King. He also inspired pacifists across the globe before, during and after World
War II. He was particularly influential on the Peace Pledge Union (Bertram Russell was one of
the founders) that was very active in Britain and Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. I have
access to nearly fifty of Gregg’s unpublished and un-catalogued notebooks that will need to be
read and assessed. These are currently archived at the Thoreau Institute but are being digitized
for on-line access. The student will work on an initial bibliography of the work of Gregg and the
Peace Pledge Union and potentially help with the evaluation of the unpublished notebooks. It is
hoped that this work will result in a book length manuscript on the impact of Gregg on peace
movements in the 20th Century. The student scholar will work closely with Professor Wooding
on planning an initial article for which there may be a potential for co-authorship.
Skills desired from student:
 Research skills for conducting literature reviews and collecting relevant sources
 Analytic skills -- to review primary texts in order to identify and record relevant
passages
 Good writing skills
 Organizational skills
Potential project tasks:
 Literature search on all aspects of Gregg’s work and writing about him. Literature search
on the work of the Peace Pledge Union and related organizations.
 Writing summary bibliographic essays
 Examining and cataloguing unpublished notebooks
 Writing chronological summary of Gregg’s life in biographical form
 Possible travel to the Thoreau Society in Concord, MA (the extent of this piece of the
project is not yet known and student would not be expected to travel solo so a car is not
necessary)
Dale Young, Theater Program/Department of English: “Writing a Book or Play about
Susan Adamek”
At this time I see the work as eventually splintering into two results: a book length work as well
as a scripted work, either for small ensemble or single female performer. The subject: Susan
Adamek. Briefly, she began in the perfect, loving family that was ripped apart by an auto
accident killing her father and permanently injuring her mother with all children in the car,
witnessing the event. Her life became a struggle of perfecting the “Everything is fine” smile in
order to make sure she would be seen as “worth keeping” in her variety of foster home
experiences. Married very young, diapering babies when her friends were in college, and starting
college “late” with three children in tow, quite literally at times. She enters the work place, gets
her driver’s license, opens food pantries, takes in respite care babies for single mothers, often of
different cultures, and all to the great dismay of her husband and significant discrimination of
those around her. It’s the late 1960’s and the early 70’s and Susan learns of Betty Friedan; with
friends she filches money from their grocery allowances to fly Ms. Friedan in for several
consciousness raising sessions held in secret. Soon the group is organizing and executing local
boycotts, sit ins, marches, radio and television appearances, and more. She becomes President of
local chapters of N.O.W. and develops a life outside the norm of the time. Divorce follows.
Susan strives to be the quintessential woman, moving from activist to power woman: executive,
mother, single woman, and more; succeeding to some degree and to some cost. She is ousted
from jobs due to glass ceilings and political jealousies, enters the not for profit sector, re-marries,
and after sixty years of fear, finally comes to grip with her family, her losses, and her hesitation
at taking on the title of Artist. She is currently retired, a regionally successful and award winning
textile/ assemblage media artist, and more outspoken than ever in her desire to “pay it forward”
and remind people, especially young women, of their roots and rights.
Skills desired from student:
 Interest in some aspect of Civil Rights, Gender Studies, Women’s Studies, Family
Dynamics, Creativity and Culture, etc.
 Interest in the arts, interdisciplinarity, creative writing and/or performance
Potential project tasks:
 Assisting in obtaining primary research material (newspapers, radio and television
broadcasts, public archives)
 Developing a strategy towards contextualizing these experiences with the larger cultural
events of these eras
 The Scholar can assume they will be assisting me in creating timelines, relationship
charts, summaries, visual representations, and other means of providing context
 Additional opportunities for research experience will include interviews and investigation
of written materials/artifacts-possibly working directly with Ms. Adamek and other
available primary sources, either in the form of telephone and written correspondence-or
in person, when those opportunities might arise