This semester the Psychology Department has welcomed new research assistants! The HR Science Research Team is comprised of undergraduate students as well as master’s students in the IOHRM program, and they are investigating diverse areas through their applied research. Please take a look at their amazing project descriptions, and reach out if you would like more information!
The GEAR UP Research Team
Team-members (left-to-right): Austin Melzer, Scott Kirby, Stella Arnesen, Jessie Harris, & Yasmin Ayala-Johnson
The GEAR UP project is currently aimed at bettering middle and high school education for future educational success by providing insightful research and analysis. Our goals for the year are to focus on what traits make a successful high school student, particularly looking at the role absenteeism may play. By the end of the semester, we hope to have cleaned up, analyzed, and created a report of our findings that is presentation ready.
The Sustainability Research Team
Team-members (left-to-right): Nicolas Simard, John Lang, Samantha Harris, Rachel Boone, & Ashley Tollefsrud (not pictured)
The sustainability team is working in partnership with Mercer. Their project looks to examine the relationship between how a company scores on some basic sustainability measures and ratings of employee engagement. We hypothesize that more "sustainable" companies will see higher levels of engagement amongst their employees.
The Evidence-based Practices Research Team
Team-members (left-to-right): Ana Mateus, David Ruiz, Shamin Jamadar, & Taylor Lundy
The goal of this team is to use evidence-based practices (e.g., scholarly literature and research, expert knowledge, data, etc.) to conduct a research study, which is aimed at analyzing psychology students’ understanding of their worth in the modern workplace. While psychology students gain a plethora of critical skills that are extremely desired by numerous employers through their coursework and research, these graduates are chronically underemployed. Our goal is to understand this disconnect.
The Safety Team
Team-members (left-to-right): Ava Young, Matthew Laske, Tara O’Neil, Julie Brooks, Maira Compagnone, Connor Linden, Royale Nicholson, Philip Hinson,, Rachel Bellflowers, Nicholas Garnowski, Sam Biggs, & Cori Ferguson (not pictured)
The Safety Team works in partnership with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, as well as two global manufacturing firms, to use data analysis to identify risk markers in the workplace. This information will help organizations narrow the scope of their interventions, using their resources more effectively to reduce injuries and fatalities. In addition, they are working on developing an assessment tool that gauges organizational readiness for safety analytics.
