Prospective Undergraduate Students

The Family Studies Lab provides undergraduate students with comprehensive research training and experience. Currently, the lab is actively focused on recruiting and running participants for our SPARC project, which is aimed toward evaluating the efficacy of a brief, psychoeducational intervention for families that have children with intellectual or developmental disabilities.

Undergraduate students in the FSL have the opportunity to obtain advanced training in psychology and family studies methodology by working closely with faculty, professional staff, graduate students, and advanced undergraduate students. Our goals are that undergraduates will become (a) knowledgeable of various methods in family research and skilled in administering methods currently used in the multiple research projects conducted in our lab, (b) informed about the latest empirical research on family relationships, and (c) able to critique the research literature and to identify possible directions for future research in studying families.

Undergraduate research assistants will participate in all activities that support ongoing research projects. This includes weekly lab meetings, data management, behavioral coding, and active data collection through direct contact with research participants. Students will be required to engage in hands-on learning by contributing to research at the Shaw Center and will be assigned research tasks across the current projects. Advanced students are encouraged to pursue mentored research, seek external funding for advanced research opportunities during the summer, and to complete Senior Theses. Time spent on work in the FSL during the academic year should comprise approximately 9 hours per week (120 hours for the semester), for which students will earn 3 credit hours.

Interested students should contact Dr. Cummings, Dr. Bergman, or Jessica Likens for more information.

Download an application. (PDF, 93k).