Where might your McNair Scholar experience take you? Dr. Guadalupe Carrillo draws from her own journey to offer reflections and practical guidance for students navigating academic and professional pathways. As a first-generation student from a rural town in California, Dr. Carrillo became a UC Berkeley McNair Scholar, discovered humanities research during her summer research experience, earned a PhD in English, and now serves as an Assistant Dean at Stanford University. In this presentation, Dr. Carrillo will reflect on how the McNair experience helped shape her scholarly identity, commitment to educational opportunity, and understanding of the importance of finding communities of belonging. She will explore practical questions that often arise when considering graduate school and academic careers: How do you navigate impostor syndrome and uncertainty in academic spaces? How do you choose the graduate program that is right for you? And how do you articulate your story, strengths, and scholarly identity in a graduate application and beyond? Through personal reflection and practical advice, this presentation will encourage students to envision the possibilities ahead while building their own unique paths in higher education and beyond.
Limited English proficiency (LEP) and immigrant status may reduce access to and understanding of cancer information, contributing to health communication disparities. This study examined the associations between English proficiency, immigrant status, and cancer information seeking and comprehension among U.S. adults. Specifically, we assessed whether LEP and immigrant status were associated with lower confidence in obtaining cancer information and greater difficulty understanding it. We conducted a cross-sectional secondary analysis of data from the 2018 Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS 5, Cycle 2), a nationally representative survey of 3,504 U.S. adults. Weighted descriptive statistics and bivariate analyses, including chi-square tests, independent-samples t tests, and one-way analyses of variance, were performed using IBM SPSS Statistics. U.S.-born adults and those who reported speaking English very well had greater confidence in obtaining cancer information. In contrast, lower English proficiency was associated with greater difficulty understanding cancer information. These findings underscore the need for culturally and linguistically appropriate interventions to improve equitable access to cancer information.
Obesity is characterized by chronic low-grade inflammation and extensive remodeling of adipose tissue, including changes to the extracellular matrix (ECM) that promote fibrosis, restrict adipocyte plasticity, and contribute to metabolic dysfunction. However, the structural changes in adipose ECM during diet-induced obesity remain incompletely understood.
This study investigated obesity-induced alterations in adipose ECM architecture using a diet-induced obesity mouse model. Male and female C57BL/6 mice were fed either a control chow diet or a high-fat diet to generate lean and obese cohorts. Epididymal white adipose tissue (eWAT) was collected and analyzed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to visualize three-dimensional ECM organization.
SEM images were quantitatively analyzed for collagen fiber density, network organization, pore size, tissue porosity, collagen bundle thickness, alignment, and adipocyte organization. Compared with chow-fed controls, obese mice exhibited increased ECM deposition, denser and more disorganized collagen networks, reduced pore size, and decreased tissue porosity, consistent with fibrotic remodeling and the development of a stiffer ECM that may impair adipose tissue expansion.
These findings demonstrate that diet-induced obesity profoundly alters adipose ECM architecture, providing insight into the mechanisms of adipose fibrosis and identifying potential ECM-directed therapeutic targets to improve metabolic health and insulin sensitivity.
Generation Z's luxury consumption is increasingly shaped by digital environments where social media influencers construct aspirational, identity-driven, and moral narratives surrounding luxury goods. This study investigates how influencer‑driven luxury messaging shapes Gen Z’s identity construction and emotional vulnerability, arguing that luxury goods now function as socio‑emotional resources rather than merely economic commodities. Guided by Consumer Behavior Theory, Parasocial Relationship Theory, and Critical Discourse Theory, the study examines how influencers use parasocial intimacy, comparison culture, and moralized branding to position luxury as attainable, meaningful, and central to belonging and self-expression. Using a sequential exploratory mixed-methods design, the study first conducts a qualitative synthesis to identify key mechanisms underlying influencer-driven luxury consumption, including identity construction, luxury normalization, moral self-expression, parasocial trust, comparison culture, and social vulnerability. These qualitative insights will directly inform the development of a quantitative survey measuring how these constructs interact to shape Gen Z’s luxury motivations and emotional responses. The resulting conceptual framework positions luxury consumption as a socio‑emotional process embedded within digital influencer culture. This research contributes to emerging scholarship on Gen Z consumer behavior by clarifying the psychological mechanisms underlying influencer-mediated luxury consumption and identifying implications for ethical marketing, influencer accountability, and young consumers' emotional well-being.
This study explores the prevalence of moral injury among Alaskan clinicians through the lens of moral stress and moral distress. Alaskan clinicians face challenges to their professional resilience stemming from conflicts between duties and values, as well as structural constraints that limit their ability to care for patients. Moral stress and distress lead to psychological distress, poor patient outcomes, and increased burnout risk. This study seeks to answer whether: (1) Newer Alaska clinicians face greater moral stress than experienced clinicians; (2) Rural Alaska clinicians experience higher rates of moral stress than urban clinicians; and (3) Addressing ethical challenges from structural impediments in Alaska's healthcare system can lead to greater professional satisfaction and resilience. The research will be conducted in three stages: a literature review and semi-structured qualitative interviews (n=12-20 physicians) involving behavior-choice questions guided by Icek Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behavior. Third stage: Results will be coded using thematic analysis to identify the ethical challenges clinicians face and factors that would improve resilience. This first-of-its-kind study will map the phenomenon in Alaska and offer insights into professional resilience among Alaska clinicians. Findings will inform the development of resources and lay the groundwork for broader research among clinicians.
Poverty affects children’s school readiness and development by limiting their access to educational resources and early childhood supportive programs. Interventions centered around responsive parenting have shown to reduce the developmental disparities by strengthening parent-child interaction and promoting their socio-emotional growth. This study wants to examine the effectiveness of PlayReadVIP, which is an evidence-based parenting education program that uses video feedback to improve parenting skills and support school readiness in preschool children, using a mixed-methods approach with both quantitative and qualitative measures that assess literacy skills, cognitive stimulation, parenting stress, and child development. The findings from this study will contribute to the expansion of evidence-based parenting interventions in underserved communities and support the efforts to reduce disparities in early childhood development.
Formerly incarcerated individuals face significant psychological and social barriers during community reentry, yet the role of existential isolation (EI) in this process remains understudied. This longitudinal study examined the relationships among internalized stigma, anticipated stigma, EI, psychological distress, and recovery capital (RC) over a 6-month follow-up period. Anticipated stigma, but not internalized stigma, was consistently associated with higher EI, greater depression and anxiety, and lower RC. Serial mediation analyses indicated that anticipated stigma indirectly reduced RC through EI and psychological distress. These findings identify EI as a potential barrier to successful community reentry and suggest that interventions targeting anticipated stigma and EI may improve psychological well-being and strengthen RC.
Joint attention is an important social-communicative skill that supports early language development, yet little is known about how tactile communication contributes to establishing shared attention in parent-child interactions involving children who are D/deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH). Previous research suggests that parents of children who are DHH use multimodal communication, including touch, more frequently than parents of children with hearing in the typical range (CTH). This study investigated whether maternal touch is temporally coordinated with joint attention behaviors and whether these patterns differ between parent-child dyads with children who are DHH and CTH. Video-recorded parent-child interactions were coded in Datavyu for touch events and joint attention behaviors, and temporal alignment between these behaviors was analyzed. Parent-child dyads with children who are DHH showed significantly greater temporal alignment between touch and pre-joint attention than CTH dyads, with indirect touch demonstrating the largest group difference. These findings suggest that touch, particularly indirect touch through objects, may play an important role in establishing shared attention before joint attention. This study highlights tactile engagement as a potentially important adaptive behavior of DHH parent-child interactions, which may inform evidence-based strategies for parents, educators, and clinicians seeking to support early communication and language development.
People with functional seizures (FS) often experience comorbid conditions such as anxiety. Recent research has focused on understanding how FS interacts with various disorders and influences emotional regulation. This study investigates the association between FS and emotional dysregulation through a systematic review and meta-analysis. Identifying prevalence of emotional dysregulation in participants with FS may support earlier, more personalized treatments targeting anxiety, depression, and more.
Studies will be variably coded onto an Excel spreadsheet, recording result data, reliability, sample size, and more. The emotional conflict task (ECT) results were recorded and as key data points for the meta-analysis through R Studio using the metafor package. Emotional regulation questionnaires (ERQ) will be analyzed through independent sample t-tests to investigate group differences, including healthy controls (HC) and FS participants.
ERQ independent t-tests resulted in a significant difference in emotional regulation between HC (M =16.7, SD = 4.35) and FS (M = 10.42, SD = 5.33); t(1147.54) = 22.5422, p =
Workplace microaggressions are the subtle forms of bias that can affect our minoritized workers’ well-being, sense of belonging, and workplace outcomes. This literature review seeks to examine how microaggressions may shape productivity-related outcomes through psychological safety and employee voice. Rather than just focusing only on individual resilience, this review explores how workplace climates influence whether employees feel safe, heard, and able to contribute fully. By combining research on microaggressions, psychological safety, employee voice, and productivity, this review will strengthen the connection between inclusive workplaces, employee well-being, and organizational effectiveness.
Social identity shapes every aspect of our lives. Our opinions, decisions, allegiances, and relationships are determined by the social identities we gain throughout our lives. While identity remains central to sociological inquiry, we need more research quantitatively examining how intersecting identities shape the nuance of people's beliefs and allegiances. Intersectionality by Crenshaw explains how people with multiple identities can experience new forms of discrimination, but what if that theory could be used to explore how intersecting social identities shape beliefs and allegiances? Intersectionality, individualism versus collectivism, and linked fate theory each explain a unique aspect of society. Combining these theories, I hypothesize that a person with multiple marginalized identities will make decisions that not only benefit themselves, but also their preferred group via group cohesion, voting behaviors, or advocacy. In my research, I plan to conduct a pilot study of around 25 to 50 people of different identities. Participants will be asked a series of questions, and their answers will determine further follow-up via interview in a future study.
