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Student Feature: Melanna Cox Reflects on Her Experience in First Cohort of Student Grant Writing Program

What factors might keep girls from being as physically active as boys? Melanna Cox, a PhD student in the Kinesiology Department in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences, is hoping to understand the role that “benevolent sexism” plays in the physical activity levels of adolescent girls. “Benevolent sexism is the romanticized concept that women and girls need to be protected by men because they are fragile and complimentary to men,” says Cox. Too often, girls are not encouraged by coaches or parents to push themselves or persevere when learning a new sport in comparison to boys, an approach that hinders their progress and results in girls being much less physically active than boys. 

To explore these issues, Melanna plans to work in high schools in Springfield, MA and will use activity trackers, questionnaires, and focus groups to better understand the role that benevolent sexism plays in the activity levels of both adolescent girls and boys. In the future, she plans to study the reverse effect that benevolent sexism may have on adolescent boys by promoting stereotypes of masculinity. 

Melanna was selected as one of six students to participate in the first cohort of CRF’s new Graduate Student Scholars Grant Writing Program. Led by former Family Research Scholar (’10-’11), Rebecca Spencer, the program helps graduate students who are conducting family related research to apply for NSF and NIH pre-doctoral fellowships. 

Melanna applied to the program because she believed that the experience would strengthen her research proposal. The students met biweekly over the summer and throughout the fall semester and all submitted proposals in October or December. Students came to each meeting with assignments related to all the required documents for the NIH and NSF proposals. “There was food and coffee at every meeting and it was great to meet over the summer when we all had more time. Everyone in our group came from different disciplines, so we all had to learn how to explain our research to people in different fields. I also learned a lot about how to provide feedback to researchers from different backgrounds. Every time I left our meetings I felt much more confident in my progress and I felt like this huge, insurmountable grant application process was much more manageable.” 

Melanna plans to stay in touch with her cohort and hopes they can all find time to support one another as they continue in their respective PhD programs. She describes the experience as being incredibly helpful, “this has been the best writing experience I have had as a student and it has helped to build my confidence as an independent researcher.”