Samuel (Sam) Klein
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Outside of the classroom, I spent a significant portion of my time during my undergraduate career taking on research projects in my subject of interest, social psychology. I joined Dr. Dykema-Engblade’s research lab, where we initially focused on conceptual biases in real-world contexts, including consumption stereotypes. Working in this lab provided me with hands-on experience in data collection, data analysis, and the presentation of research results. Moreover, it gave me skills in the art of collaboration. Collaboration is one of the most important factors to research in today’s day and age. I also began a collaborative effort with researchers out of the University of Limerick to study the similarities between definitions of lay concepts. Our work has continued beyond my time at NEIU and has uncovered interesting associations between the concepts of Role Models and Heroes. While at NEIU, I was a member of the honors program, which required that I develop an original research project, and report it as a major thesis. My project, under the guidance of Dr. Dykema-Engblade, studied how motivation and context interact to affect perception. Specifically, my project considered how the lack of goal-relevant information in a perceived context could reduce the extraction of scene information, and memory of the perceived context. When contexts matched in relevancy to a perceiver’s motivation (observational goal), more information was extracted from the scene, and more information was subsequently remembered. I was then funded by the honors department to present my thesis work at a conference in Portland, Oregon, where the research was awarded the Mary Waterstreet Prize in Psychology. These three lines of research that I was provided the agency to cover in my undergraduate career at NEIU shaped me as an aspiring research scientist. My undergraduate success was made possible by the unique focus that the department has for individual student goals, and those in the department that fomented my love of science. Samuel (Sam) Klein |
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