Research Highlights

An identity-based learning community intervention enhances the lived experience and success of first-generation college students in the biological sciences

Deborah J. Wu, Tracie M. Gibson, Linda M. Ziegenbein, Randall W. Phillis, Caralyn B. Zehnder, Elizabeth A. Connor & Nilanjana Dasgupta

"Working-class first-generation (FG) college students are underrepresented in higher education and STEM. Using a longitudinal quasi-experiment, we tested the impacts of a living learning community (LLC) in the biological sciences on FG students in their first year of college (Semester 1: N = 243; Semester 2: N = 199), across three cohorts (2018–2019, 2019–2020 and 2020–2021). Participation in the LLC enhanced FG students’ belonging, confidence, motivation, grades, knowledge of the social relevance of biology, and reduced STEM anxiety compared to a control group of FG students not in an LLC. LLC participation also increased retention in biological science majors one-year post-intervention compared to the control FG group. Moreover, LLC participation closed the academic gap between FG students in the LLC and honors students from college-educated families in a separate honors LLC. Benefits of the LLC intervention remained stable despite the COVID-19 pandemic, when living together became impossible, producing positive effects across cohorts from pre-pandemic to in-pandemic. Our results suggest that affinity-based learning communities—with or without shared housing—in the transition to college enhance academic thriving, persistence, and reduce social class driven achievement gaps in STEM." Read paper

PBS In the Media

Kyle Kainec, program coordinator at the Institute for Applied Life Sciences, is quoted in a story on a sleep study being conducted by the SomneuroLab at UMass Amherst, to gauge the accuracy of various sleep-monitoring devices. “Everybody’s heard of a Fitbit or an Apple Watch, or all of these new, great sleep-monitoring technologies, but whether they accurately monitor what we think they’re monitoring, especially in populations, like older adults or people with cognitive disorders, remains to be seen, and we’re really trying to investigate how that process works and take some of these devices and compare them to the research equivalence,” Kainec says. Western Mass News

Tara Mandalaywala discusses how kids perceive race and class. “The research that I do overall tries to understand how kids start to think about themselves, how do they think about the people that are around them, and how do they think more broadly about this big world that they live in—which is really complicated and full of lots of different kinds of people and lots of different kinds of structures and societies.” WHMP

On a recent podcast, Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, Professor Emerita in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, discussed her book “The Two Moralities,” which explores the moral foundations of political ideologies. The Ethical Frontier Podcast

Linda Tropp Comments on New Machine-Learning Model Analyzing 'Peace Speech.' Scientific American

Readings and Research in Disability | Final Honors Theses

Developmental Disabilities and Human Services Program (DDHS)