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Mental Health And Academic Experiences Among U.S. College Students During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Michael E. Roberts, Jillian Meyer '23, Elizabeth A. Bell

Psychology and Neuroscience Faculty Publications

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, U.S. college students reported increased anxiety and depression. This study examines mental health among U.S college students during the subsequent 2020–2021 academic year by surveying students at the end of the fall 2020 and the spring 2021 semesters. Our data provide cross-sectional snapshots and longitudinal changes. Both surveys included the PSS, GAD-7, PHQ-8, questions about students’ academic experiences and sense of belonging in online, in-person, and hybrid classes, and additional questions regarding behaviors, living circumstances, and demographics. The spring 2021 study included a larger, stratified sample of eight demographic groups, and we added scales to …

Covid-19 Is Not All Bad News: Negative And Surprisingly Positive Reports From College Stem Students And Implications For Stem Instruction, Yuchen Jiang, Boyan Ma, Zimo Ma, Pamela M. Propsom, Zaheen Rashed '24, Rudrayani Upadhyay, Zichen Zhao

Student Research

The negative educational consequences of COVID-19 are well documented. Much less investigated have been any potential positive outcomes of the pandemic. We surveyed 392 students at one college querying why they continue studying STEM or leave the STEM disciplines and about the effects of COVID-19 on their education. STEM students may have been especially impacted by pandemic-imposed remote instruction given STEM’s reliance on hands-on laboratory experiences. Because the literature indicates that people of color and those from lower socioeconomic groups were more negatively affected by COVID-19, we hypothesized that students from these groups would report greater adverse educational consequences of …

Examining The Impact Of Covid-19 On The Education And Development Of American Students, Riley Fortin '25

Student Research

After the COVID-19 pandemic, the vast majority of American children have fallen behind on core subjects due to the ultimate ineffectiveness of remote learning. This study attempts to discover the degree to which children have fallen behind through the trends in the National Association of Educational Procurement’s two most recent testing years. A database accessed from Google has been analyzed, filtered by state and visualized in tables in order to indicate any possible trends as a result of remote learning brought on by the pandemic. By looking at data in seven different states across the country, there is a notable …

Evidence-Based Study: The Effect Of The Covid-19 Pandemic On Post-Secondary Enrollment And Chosen Fields Of Study, Hannah Fields '25

Student Research

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States in March of 2020 derailed educational systems at all levels. Specifically, at the post-secondary level, the pandemic sent many students online or forced them to take a fifth year to complete their degrees. As a result, post-secondary enrollment rates are likely to have dropped to reflect these changing post-COVID views surrounding education. Additionally, changing viewpoints about the essentiality of certain jobs and roles changed the chosen fields of study of these same students. Data for this study was collected by way of a short-scale meta-analysis, and enrollment rates were split …

The Plague: A Contemporary Lens, Khawaja Ahmed, Delaney Collier, Will Plumb

Student Research

The Plague by Albert Camus bears witness to the town of Oran amidst the spread of the plague from the beginning to the end of the quarantine placed on the town. Although it is a direct comparison to the COVID-19 pandemic, Camus’s themes expressed in his novel resonates with other contemporary worldly issues that may or may not have an explanation. These other contemporary issues include war and the climate crisis. From our 2022 perspective, we have seen the COVID pandemic play out firsthand. We have witnessed from afar the threat of World War III and the current war in …

Mental Health Among College Students During The Covid-19 Pandemic: A Longitudinal Study, Jillian Meyer, Lizzie Bell, Michael E. Roberts Phd

Annual Student Research Poster Session

This research project was a continuation of research conducted in PSY215 Research Methods from the Fall 2020 Semester and subsequently extended in Spring 2021 via Asher funds to collect additional data. The purpose of the research was twofold: conduct a longitudinal study that examines how college students’ mental health has been impacted by the COVID-19 virus from the Fall 2020 semester to the Spring 2021 semester; a second goal was to obtain a racially diverse sample (expanding beyond our initial cross-section) and to also examine factors such as the impact of big vs smaller universities’ administrative responses to COVID-19, and …

On The Outside Looking In: A Global Doula Response To Covid-19, Angela Castañeda, Julie Johnson Searcy

Sociology & Anthropology Faculty publications

From around the world, doulas report the impact of new COVID-19 restrictions on their ability to provide continuous emotional, physical, and informational support to pregnant people and their families. In a qualitative survey conducted in March and April 2020, we heard from over 500 doulas in 24 countries. Doulas practicing across the world revealed rapid changes to hospital policies. Even accounting for different public health responses across countries, the doulas in our study pointed to one common theme - their absence at births and the subsequent need to support birthing people virtually. In a follow-up survey and in interviews we …

Mapping Disparities In Covid-19: Determining The Demographic, Economic, Educational, Housing, Quality Of Life, And Health Factors That Relate To Disparities In Covid-19 Infections And Deaths, Kate Stanley, Naima Shifa

Annual Student Research Poster Session

Background: Throughout the pandemic, minority groups, particularly African Americans and Hispanic/Latino Americans have experienced disproportionately high infection and death rates as compared to their white and Asian counterparts. Though this phenomenon could be attributed to high rates of pre-existing conditions in black and Hispanic communities, there are other underlying factors that cause such disparity. We set out to determine whether or not various demographic, economic, educational, health, housing, and quality of life indicators were correlated with higher rates of COVID-19 infection.

Methods: We used USAFacts COVID-19 data to select the 150 United States counties with the highest infection rates. We …