Becker, who graduated from Lawrence with a dual degree in voice performance and psychology, was intrigued. She wanted to explore this relationship between the vocal exercise and the performances that follow. 

“What I really wanted to ask, empirically and biologically, was what are the mechanisms that underlie the perceivable differences in performance?” she said. “Is it through stress and anxiety reduction?”

The study included volunteer singers who underwent a mock audition with professional adjudicators and written feedback, simulating a real environment that can breed anxiety for performers. In the first round of mock auditions, the volunteers were asked to warm up with their own techniques. The singers’ salivary cortisol was tested, and the researchers then asked participants about their levels of stress and anxiety. 

Over the course of two weeks, participants were taught to use the improvisation exercise before their performance, and the mock audition process was repeated. This time, the singers practiced the improvisation exercise before performing in front of the panel.

“We found that upon arrival, everyone was experiencing a similar level of stress at both the first and second auditions,” Becker said. “We found that cortisol levels during performance were significantly reduced at the second event after they’d practice that intervention right before their performance. They also reported feeling less stress and less anxiety. It was clinically relevant.”

Both Saladin and Abbo graduated in June with dual degrees. Their interdepartmental interests made this study possible. Having students with expertise in both the Conservatory and the Psychology Department served to bridge the gaps, and Becker and Leigh-Post said they couldn’t have done it without them.

“Dr. Becker was really in tune with my experiences as a double-degree student in neuroscience and music performance because she was also a double-degree student at Lawrence, and she immediately presented the idea to me of being a leader on a collaborative project with Dr. Leigh-Post and the Conservatory voice department,” Saladin said. “That’s a really special and particularly ‘Lawrence’ set of circumstances.”

Abbo, who majored in music performance (voice) and English, found it equally appealing.

“This project has affirmed to me how fun and rewarding it is to collaborate with people with different areas of expertise,” Abbo said. “None of us could have produced this research or this paper with just our individual skill sets.”

A year later, the project continues to have legs. The research was presented at The Voice Foundation conference in the spring, bringing it to a cross-institutional audience of scholars. The researchers also plan to present it to other voice teachers later this year. Meanwhile, they are preparing a manuscript for publication.

Abbo is currently in London pursuing a master’s degree in modern literature. Saladin is a graduate student in trombone performance at DePaul University.

While she has seen much athletic success in her time at Lawrence, Oliver cautions athletes to always see the person beyond the records and titles.  

“Know that everyone struggles,” she said. “I think that a lot of people think I don’t do that. They say you’re doing so good, but they don’t understand I go through the same problems as everyone else. Everyone struggles; I’m not special.” 

This is a message she hopes to continue to spread as her career progresses. 

Oliver said she has enjoyed running from a young age. In youth soccer programs, she always enjoyed the running aspect of the sport more than anything. The switch to running cross country brought much success and joy to her athletic career, and she was ready to bring that passion into college athletics. 

Oliver first visited Lawrence on a recruiting visit in March 2020, flying from her hometown in California. Meeting the team and seeing the culture fostered at Lawrence made the decision to run as a Viking an easy one. 

“The team seemed like it had a lot of undiscovered potential,” Oliver said. “Back in the day, the team was really small, but even then, everyone had good relationships with each other and that was more important than the numbers. The team needs to be together as one if you want to succeed.” 

As both an outdoor and indoor runner, Oliver is active all year, with practice in every season. She runs the mile and 3,000 meters in indoor track, and 1,500 and 5,000 in outdoor track. This is in addition to cross country in the fall. 

Oliver loves having athletic events throughout the school year.

“I really like getting to do both,” she said. “I really enjoy going to practice every season.”

Oliver now has her sights set on the Midwest Conference Cross Country Championships on Nov. 2, to be hosted by Lawrence at Reid Golf Course.

Glick is a social psychologist whose sub-specialty is the study of prejudice. In 2022, he was honored by the Society of Experimental Social Psychology (SESP) for work that has “proven highly influential” over a long period of time. His scholarship includes groundbreaking theories on stereotype content, ambivalent sexism, and toxic organizational culture. He has authored more than 90 articles that have collectively been cited more than 60,000 times. His books include Sage Handbook of Prejudice and The Social Psychology of Gender.

Metalsky has specialized in the study of depression, stress, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and general psychotherapy. He has published more than 50 scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals and books and presented his work at more than 75 national conferences. A fellow of the American Psychological Society since 2009, he served for more than 15 years on the editorial board of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. He also has served on the board of directors of the Wisconsin Psychological Association.

The novel, from Mariner Books, is an emotional rollercoaster that spans more than 90 years, from a heartbreaking opening scene at an orphanage in Chicago in 1924 to the unveiling in 2015 of jarring secrets held for a lifetime in a small northern Minnesota town. The story of Cecily is one of pain, cruelty, love—forbidden and otherwise—and hope.

While Baker’s first two novels, Keeping the House (2007) and I Gave My Heart to Know This (2011), both from Random House, put her on the literary map, they did not generate quite this level of enthusiasm.

“To know that book editors were noticing it, readers were noticing it, people were anticipating it, that was really exciting,” Baker said from her home on the coast of Maine.

The new novel falls into the genre of historical fiction—as did her first two novels—and the roots of Baker’s history-focused storytelling can be found in her experiences as an undergraduate at Lawrence three decades ago, when the psychology major with a secret desire to write novels fell in love with American history.

“At Lawrence, I got so fascinated by my American history classes, my American literature classes,” she said.

While finishing her psychology major, she worked an internship with the Outagamie County Historical Society in Appleton, and she took an independent study course in fiction writing during her senior year—all while filling spiral notebooks with ideas for a novel.

“I was always drawn toward writing novels, but at the time I was looking for a more practical career path,” Baker said. “I think I was looking for something that wasn’t so close to my heart, because I was also so shy that I didn’t tell anybody I wrote novels in notebooks. A few close friends knew but it was otherwise a secret.”

After graduating from Lawrence, Baker took an internship in Tennessee working as a living history interpreter—dressing in costume, quilting by hand, cooking on a wood stove, and finding other ways to bring American history to life. She completed a master’s degree in American studies at the University of Minnesota, then worked at a World War II museum in Superior, Wisconsin.

All of it built to her next chapter. She eventually went to work for an independent bookstore while beginning to scratch that itch as a novelist. Four years later, Keeping the House, set in the 1950s, was released.

“All the pieces of my Lawrence experience and my master’s degree all dovetail into becoming a historical novelist,” Baker said. “The focus on psychology gave me a different inroad. A lot of people as fiction writers go get an MFA, which is a fabulous path to take if that’s your right path. For me, I wasn’t ready at the time to claim that part of myself, so I think I actually have a really different perspective in terms of how I look at characters or how I look at history—because of training in things other than how to write fiction. I have the training in how to look at the world from those different lenses. I think it’s been a very valuable thing to have.”

The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson comes 13 years after Baker’s previous novel—she launched an online teaching course for would-be novelists and did freelance writing and editing in the meantime. It was in early 2021 that she redirected her attention to a next novel, wanting to write a story about the keeping of a decades-long secret in a small town, all of it eventually unraveling through modern DNA testing.

“I am fascinated by all the stories I’ve read of people who have had DNA surprises in their lives and how that upends their sense of themselves, their identities, and what happens as a consequence of those surprises,” Baker said.

She wanted to weave a story that would interplay multiple storylines over long passages of time.

“I started there and wrote the story going back and forth in time because I was interested in playing with the relationship between past and present,” Baker said. “Obviously, in this book, the past has a direct effect on the present.”

She wrote the initial draft in eight months, far faster than she’d usually get through a first draft.

“I usually take a number of years to write a draft,” Baker said. “I can’t explain why it happened. It just felt like it was a story that already happened, and I was just writing it down. I didn’t struggle with how to make it make sense. It just felt like it was all there.”

Her new literary agent sold the book to Mariner Books, which kicked off an intense editing process. By last summer, Baker was already receiving glowing feedback from authors she admires. And by fall the book was starting to show up on best-of lists in advance of its February release.

Baker likes where she’s at as she gains notice as a novelist and builds momentum as a teacher and entrepreneur. She’s growing her online teaching—providing start-up guidance to novelists-to-be—while considering options for a next novel. She’s also working on a screenplay, and her agent is having conversations with studios about taking The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson to the big screen.

“I’ve been figuring out how to support myself with writing and independent projects,” Baker said. “I’ve learned a lot about myself along the way. Being my own boss and having the real estate of my brain completely available to think the thoughts I want to think, that to me is a very valuable thing. I think that is something I learned at Lawrence, or that I came to value at Lawrence. The privilege of intellectual freedom, the privilege to think about the things you want to think about, the privilege to pursue the lines of inquiry you want to pursue. For me, that line of inquiry is simply how to understand the human experience, how to convey human experience, how to bring the past to life in ways that possibly can help us to not repeat the same mistakes.”

Gupta received his fellowship in social psychology. Working toward his Ph.D. at Stanford University, Gupta is looking to apply social psychological insights to social problems through theory-driven research related to issues of discrimination, bias, and prejudice.

Gupta’s work after graduating from Lawrence has focused on developing and evaluating evidence-based intervention programs for young people, particularly in 6th through 12th grade. These programs use community engagement opportunities and curriculum to encourage marginalized and/or disadvantaged children to find their voice and use it within their communities. Gupta is continuing this work as he develops the theory behind it. 

Gupta focused on honing his research skills in the years between Lawrence and Stanford. After Lawrence, he began work at the Center for Social Development and Education at UMass-Boston as a research assistant. He then worked as a research coordinator for the Lifting the Bar Project at Stanford with Dr. Greg Walton’s lab. For Gupta, these work experiences not only developed his knowledge of interdisciplinary research methods but were instrumental in broadening his ideas about the application of social psychology theories to solving pressing social problems.

Gupta traces the building of this foundation to his time at Lawrence. The two-class Research Methods series with psychology professors Peter Glick and Matt Ansfield gave him the tools to put his questions about the world into research. Gupta developed strong relationships with his professors: Glick would later mentor him through his honors thesis and act as a reference for his NSF application.  

“I feel like that’s really unique about Lawrence … not just working in a lab but building a solid relationship with a professor and working closely with them to answer questions that are important to you,” he said. 

For Gupta, who grew up in a predominantly white Wisconsin community, social psychology is the framework he uses to ask questions about his experiences in society and the toolbox he uses to find the answers. He said he’s passionate about sharing these tools with others for the betterment of themselves, each other, and their communities. 

Ada Stelzer ’21

Stelzer received her fellowship in mathematics. As she works toward her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, she’s working to answer questions about complex polynomial equations. She is studying Schubert calculus, which aims to find points of intersection between surfaces in large numbers of dimensions. Because these surfaces are so abstract, she’s using something called Groebner geometry to relate them to simpler coordinate planes. The process is similar to polynomial long division.

Stelzer’s work as an undergrad at Lawrence, particularly her independent study in Groebner geometry, led her to Schubert calculus in graduate school.

“There was a lot of room to do what you wanted,” Stelzer said of her time at Lawrence. “My senior year, my friend Travis (Dillon ’21) and I organized a math colloquium series where we and others took turns giving talks on our favorite subjects. At a big school, we wouldn’t have been able to do that.”

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Studying in the liberal arts allowed Stelzer to pursue linguistic anthropology, creative writing, and choir alongside mathematics. She said that variety of study has had a positive influence on her teaching style.

Stelzer is excited to make an impact in the mathematics field. For her, working on a problem is a connection of more than numbers.

“When you use someone else’s result, it’s kind of like you’re holding hands across time,” she said. “When you understand, it’s like you talk to each other, even though they were living 200 years ago.”

Sarabeth Brandt ’21

Brandt received her grant in electrical engineering. Currently a Ph.D. student at Pennsylvania State University, Brandt is working to develop a tool to monitor and study ground-nesting bees.

She is studying ground-piercing radar to develop this tool. Typically, these radar systems are used for larger surveys, such as finding pipes underground.

“My goal is to take that idea and push it a bit further by looking for these small nest cells,” Brandt said. “The idea is to use the electromagnetic properties of the nest cells … to identify them against their environment.”

Brandt is trying to pinpoint squash bee nests. Squash bees, which have evolved along Pennsylvania squash plants, are especially effective pollinators of squash. Unlike honeybees, they nest individually and are inactive for most of the year, making it difficult to research them or track their population. Brandt said a tool like the one she’s developing would allow researchers to assess the bees’ state of population decline and make it easier to answer questions about the bees’ impact on squash plants.

Brandt found her passion for this project through a research program at Penn State called Drawdown while an undergrad at Lawrence. The program, taking place remotely in the summer of 2020, was focused on research toward climate solutions. Brandt worked with electrical engineers and etymologists to predict insects’ reactions to electromagnetic waves.

A physics major at Lawrence, Brandt found the liberal arts education made it easier to think outside of her field, which was invaluable at Drawdown. She credits Lawrence with developing her skills in writing concisely, noting the positive comments about her writing on her application.

“Seeking out unique opportunities can send you down really fun and interesting paths,” Brandt said.

Hilt, professor of psychology, received the Excellence in Scholarship & Creative Activity Award.

She returned to her alma mater in 2011 and has done impressive scholarly work in the field of psychology. A licensed clinical psychologist, much of Hilt’s research has focused on adolescent depression, rumination, and self-injury. She has been lauded in scholarly and popular media for research that combines the insights of clinical psychology and neuroscience. It is research that her colleagues have called “life-changing, indeed, potentially life-saving,” said Peter Blitstein, provost and dean of faculty.

“The influence of your research, well-funded by the National Institutes of Health among other sources, is more than matched by its significance,” Blitstein said in a citation presented to Hilt.

Megan Pickett

Pickett, associate professor of physics, received the Excellence in Teaching Award.

She joined the Lawrence faculty in 2006 and has been a passionate and accomplished teacher of astrophysics. She has contributed to the redesign of the introductory physics curriculum, has led First-Year Studies, and has been innovative in celebrating the joys of science. Colleagues and students have spoken of Pickett’s “infectious” wonderment of science.

“Many of us have met you on days when you appear before your class in costume portraying unrecognized scientists of the past,” Blitstein said in a citation presented to Pickett. “And you have introduced the Science of Superheroes to the Lawrence curriculum.”

Elizabeth Sattler

Sattler, assistant professor of mathematics, received the Early Career Teaching Award.

She has been a member Lawrence’s mathematics faculty since 2018. She has collaborated with colleagues to revise the calculus sequence and develop a course in discrete mathematics. Sattler also is co-developing a course for the Summer Institute, Starting STEM-Savvy, demonstrating a commitment to developing students’ quantitative skills at all levels.

“Your colleagues recognize your dedication and excellence as a teacher, describing you as a ‘superb’ instructor with ‘fantastic’ pedagogical instincts,” Blitstein said in presenting Sattler her citation.

While Becker finished the autism research study after joining the Lawrence faculty, her work began as a collaborative study with colleagues at St. Joseph’s. She was an affiliate of the university’s Kinney Center for Autism Education and Support, where adults on the spectrum can join a day program that focuses on life skills for living independently, such as money management, cooking, laundry, and job training.

“There are so many more resources for young kids on the autism spectrum; adults are this tremendously underserved and understudied population,” Becker said. “For individuals on the autism spectrum, there is a lot of literature suggesting more chronic levels of stress, and high stress leads to a whole host of negative health outcomes.”

Noticing participants’ love of video games, Becker and her collaborators tried figuring out how to combine video games with the stress-relieving benefits of exercise. Ultimately, they used VR games with a variety of themes, and an exercise bike peripheral. With the games powered by pedaling, participants would play and report their experiences. Salivary cortisol levels, a biological marker of stress, were examined pre and post intervention to see if stress levels change in response to exercise.

“To me, what’s exciting about this work, as compared to my animal research, is that it’s not only translational, but directly applied,” Becker said.

There’s a wide range of people on the autism spectrum, Becker said. Some, but not all, are nonverbal, meaning they have not learned or choose not to speak. For nonverbal participants, Becker said they were able to report their willingness to participate in the study through non-verbal methods (nodding yes) and via their caregivers.

“We want to be mindful that we’re not being exploitative in any way,” Becker said.

Becker said participants and families overall reported enjoying the “exer-gaming,” and reductions in the stress hormone cortisol were observed, particularly for those who had higher levels of baseline cortisol.  An unexpected benefit was increased socialization. Most frequently documented were instances of participants verbally encouraging one another as they played the games. One day, two participants started singing together during their session and they persisted in singing a song throughout the rest of the sessions.

“It was cool to see the guys were all of a sudden chatting with each other and cheering for each other during those sessions,” Becker said. “It was really gratifying to see that we could facilitate social connections through engaging in these activities.”

Becker said her biggest remaining question is how long these benefits last. Becker also said all participants identified as male, which limits the research because autism can present differently in different genders. Nevertheless, Becker is optimistic about future opportunities to learn from those on the spectrum.

Making a difference

A native of Ohio, Becker was a voice performance major when she first came to Lawrence. But she took an intro to psychology class from Matt Ansfield in her first year and loved it.

“I was really hooked,” Becker said. “I started working with Dr. Bruce Hetzler around that time, and the rest is history.”

Hetzler retired from the Lawrence faculty in 2019 after 42 years on teaching.

Becker said her return to teach at her alma mater has been amazing. She loves that professors and students are constantly learning from each other.

“What I love about Lawrentians in particular is that students show up to class very hungry to learn, and I think it’s a stimulating environment to be in,” she said.

Becker said she isn’t yet sure if or how this specific research project will continue. Nevertheless, she wants to keep ties with her former colleagues at St. Joseph’s and Marquette University and continue helping those on the autism spectrum as much as she can.

“I think the Appleton community would be a really interesting place to tap into,” Becker said.

She said this type of VR-based project could help neurodivergent people navigate other stressful scenarios such as police interactions.

“We saw a real difference for our participants, and our goal now is to share it as broadly as we can,” Becker said.

Augmented reality lets users see digital creations inserted into the real world; virtual reality immerses users in an entirely digital world.

“You can use a physical mock-up to give you just what you need to touch and interact with … and then have someone put on a VR headset where there’s a virtual model that is lined up with the physical mock-up but has a much higher level of detail,” Brailovsky said.

A role for psychology

The lab is part of NASA’s Human Factors Analysis branch. Human Factors’ engineering work is about making sure designs are user-friendly as well as functional.

Brailovsky said Human Factors analysts look for questions rather than answering existing ones—it’s an intersection between engineering, psychology, and computer sciences.

“My first thought is always the person, and that’s not typical for engineering perspectives,” Brailovsky said.

While virtual reality isn’t perfect for recreating the real world, it can help test scenarios too difficult or expensive for labs.

“We can’t mimic reality without first understanding how our brains construct reality,” Brailovsky said. “Color doesn’t exist, it’s just wavelengths of light. Sound doesn’t exist; it’s all illusions created by our brain processing information. So, we can’t replicate those without knowing really well how we create our own reality.”

Psychology is important in the space industry, especially when considering the rise in commercial spaceflight and possible future Mars landings.

“This is like going back to the old age of sail ships where you could have six people in a boat for months. …,” Brailovsky said. “Only in our case, they’re in zero gravity in a really tight container, and if there’s a hole in the container, they all die. What does that do to a person’s perception?”

Along with making sure everything works properly, Human Factors analysts want space habitations to feel as much like home as possible.

Making dreams reality

Brailovsky has held a fascination with space since childhood. His interest in psychology developed in high school. He also took computer programming courses at Lawrence and interned at Iowa State University’s Virtual Reality Application Center last summer.

“It’s very exciting to be a psych student now coming into this industry because attention to it is growing,” he said.

Brailovsky applied for an opportunity he saw on NASA’s website about using augmented reality to test spacesuits. Although his application was unsuccessful, another NASA program leader in need of virtual reality expertise saw Brailovsky’s application and invited him to join.

“This is what I told people my dream job was when I was 15,” Brailovsky said. “I didn’t know what they did here, and I didn’t know this group existed. I invented them for myself and just hoped they were out there. They were, and they called me.”

Brailovsky said he wasn’t planning on interning during his senior year to avoid graduation conflicts, but this opportunity was too good to pass up.

“What they teach you when you study psychology is to always be looking out for the unexpected,” he said.

The internship will last through the summer. Brailovsky intends to return to Lawrence this fall for one final term to wrap up his psychology major and minors in cognitive science, computer science, and data science. After graduation, Brailovsky said he hopes to head back to the Marshall Center.

“I have never felt as professionally respected in my life before; the people in my lab are incredible,” he said. 

Brailovsky said the chance to contribute to future Mars landings with his VR and psychology skills makes him want to stay with NASA. His ultimate goal is to have his own zero-gravity psychological laboratory.

Until then, Brailovsky said driving past a Saturn V rocket every morning on his way to work is a powerful motivator.

“Just the chance to participate in our generation’s version of the moon landing is incredible,” he said.

The “stereotype content model” paper explored a theory of stereotyping and bias that looked at prejudice as being more than a consistent or uniform antipathy.

Following Gordon Allport’s lead, social psychologists previously thought prejudice “could range from a mild dislike leading to avoidance to a burning hate and rage that can lead to attack,” Glick said of the earlier definition. “But it’s all on one dimension.”

With Fiske as the lead author, the trio developed the “stereotype content model” that added layers and nuances in an effort to better understand and respond to prejudices of all kinds. They established that people perceive groups on two core dimensions—warmth and competence—with many groups being seen as high on one dimension but low on the other. Groups seen as warm but incompetent are liked but not respected. People may feel warmly toward them, but deny them challenging assignments and view them as incapable for leadership roles. Groups seen as competent but not warm are respected, but disliked. As a result, people may hold conspiracy theories about them as powerful enemies, leading to hostility and attack. Both experience discrimination, whether due to low expectations or resentment.

“The ‘stereotype content model’ gained a lot of credence, led to a lot of research, and had a lot of influence in how we think of prejudice,” Glick said. “It has built momentum along the way. As more people started to use it, it got spread beyond social psychology. Now we see people citing it from other fields, outside of psychology.”

The work wasn’t done in a vacuum. Other social psychologists were exploring related theories, one building on another. The research doesn’t solve the issues around prejudice, but it provided new frameworks to address it that can be seen today in everything from anti-bias workplace training to bias-focused court cases.

“I think we were one of the early influences where now people have really re-thought how we define prejudice,” Glick said.

Glick, a social psychologist whose sub specialty is the study of prejudice, collaborated with Fiske and Cuddy on the 2002 paper after he and Fiske had partnered on an earlier paper, The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory: Differentiating Hostile and Benevolent Sexism. In that paper, with Glick as the lead author, they posed a theory that distinguishes benevolent sexism—a term Glick and Fiske coined—from hostile sexism. The latter is easily recognizable; but benevolent sexism, they argued, is a more subtle form of discrimination, with a woman being praised and encouraged while simultaneously being undermined in the workplace.

Since then, Glick has been a sought-after media source on issues of sexism, masculine identity, stereotypes, and anti-bias training, has authored several books on related topics, and has been called multiple times to testify in federal courts on issues of bias.

Benevolent sexism is “not about opening doors for women; it’s about these assumptions that are made so you don’t even give them a chance,” Glick said. “It’s not as blatant as hostile sexism, but benevolent sexism undermines women by denying them opportunities, it’s patronizing. And it undermines collective action. You really do need to understand how these things work together.”

The writing of the “ambivalent sexism” paper led to the broader exploration of the “stereotype content model” that is now being honored by SESP, Glick said. He, Fiske, and Cuddy are expected to receive the Scientific Impact Award in October.

A member of the Lawrence faculty since 1985, Glick had another significant moment this summer. He was invited by the American Psychological Association to deliver a keynote address at its national convention in Minneapolis in early August. He spoke on how stereotypes of masculinity can hinder access to certain academic fields and why subtle adjustments in messaging can make a difference.