Background
Research was a large part of my educational journey at the University of Central Florida. By the time I graduate, I will have completed two years and five research projects. During my time at UCF, I conducted research on a variety of sociological topics, both quantitative and qualitative, ranging from reproductive justice to the geographical distribution of food access in Orlando. I have worked on a large research team, in a small group and independently. During my final year at UCF, I was accepted into UCF’s Student Undergraduate Research Council, and was able to use my experiences in undergraduate research to inspire others to get started researching their own passions.
Publications
My first research experience at UCF was with Dr. Jason Ford, a second undergraduate student, and a graduate sociology student. We investigated motives for prescription drug misuse among individuals with sexual minority status by analyzing responses from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. We found statistically significant results and wrote a manuscript that we submitted to LGBT Health, a high impact research journal. Our work was accepted after one or two revisions and published in February 2021. Seeing the entire research process from finding a research topic to publication was one of my favorite learning experiences during my time at UCF. Check out our paper in the link to the right below.
Citizen Science GIS
Citizen Science GIS was my first paid research experience and my first time working on a large interdisciplinary research team, and greatly increased my appreciation for interdisciplinary research and education. A majority of my time at Citizen Science was spent working on the team’s STEAM outreach program, a program focused on inspiring the next generation of GIS professionals by teaching mapping concepts, basic GIS principles, and flying mini drones. During my time on the team, I also contributed to several research projects and field work such as mapping the Indian River Lagoon, mapping Central Florida Utilities and more.
Food Access
Reproductive Justice
My research on the experiences of women with endometriosis’ interaction with the health care system began during my first graduate course at UCF, Inequalities in Reproductive Health. From there, I completed a Literature Review as a part of an Independent Study course with Dr. Shannon Carter. I have completed some work analyzing the r/endometriosis community group on the internet discussion application reddit; however, this work was halted due to COVID-19. My experiences taking my first graduate class as an undergraduate student and working independently on a research project were an invaluable part of my education at UCF.
Capstone Project
As a part of my Sociology bachelor’s degree at UCF, I completed a Capstone project that included finishing a manuscript. My project was on Gender, Race and Spatial Office Dynamics and used the General Social Survey (GSS) to analyze how gender and race affect the office environment using the statistical software program SPSS. However, no statistical significance was found during my analysis.
