Category: Berger Institute Experiences

When “They” Became “We”

by Lauren Livingston ’18

As a first-semester sophomore and the newest, youngest member of the Work-Life team, I had various concerns about transitioning and adding value to the team. At the beginning of the year, walking into the first team meeting was a daunting experience. How was I going to fit in? What was I going to do?

The team was already relatively established, consisting of two seniors and one alum, all of them with years of experience. Over the years, they had worked together and developed a strong team dynamic through their long nights and their successes. I joined the institute without any prior experience or knowledge about their current project and their members. However, to my delightful surprise, the minute I walked into the first meeting they spent the first hour explaining the project in­ depth to me and then updating me on their newest idea. In addition, I was immediately given an assignment to help the project by coding free response survey data.

Since the first meeting, the team has kept me continuously involved in everyone’s project and asked for my feedback. From my experiences and interactions with the members, I have learned that the authenticity of the Berger Institute is reflected by individual members’ internal drive to research their passions. I have also been given the opportunity to perceive the Berger Institute as an inclusive, ambitious, and academic community.

Victor Lopez ’17 attends WPA

-by Victor Lopez ’17

I presented my findings in a poster presentation at WPA and it was received with a lot of attention. For an hour and fifteen minutes I did not stop talking. Different visitors, students, professors, and judges, all stopped and asked me questions about the project. Anybody that stopped and looked at my poster shared an anecdote about his or her personal experiences with their names. People from Korea and the Ukraine talked about their names and how my research resonated with their own personal lives. Additionally, fellow Latinos talked about naming their own children and how family ties is an important deciding factor in choosing a name.

While presenting my research was fun and exciting, it was also great to walk around and talk to other students about their research. There were a total of nine poster presentations ranging from developmental to international psychological issues. I talked to someone who studied the frequency of discrimination amongst the Latino community; there was also a poster on the effects of attractiveness and its relationship to sex-offenders. Overall, the research presented was incredibly interesting and fun to talk about.

I am very pro9ud of my research and I am grateful to the Berger Institute’s generosity, which has allowed me to share my research with fellow students and professors. This trip has been one of the biggest highlights of my college career.

Berger Students Win Psych Award!

Each year, a division of the American Psychological Association holds a poster contest for entries with international content where students are first authors. One of our students, Victor Lopez ’17, along with Professor Kanaya and co-author Alicia Frausto ’17, presented his poster at this year’s Western Psychological Association conference in Las Vegas and WON first place! His project, “Acculturation: Analyzing Latino Families’ Assimilation Through Their Children’s Names,” examined the traditional versus non-traditional names in association with different generations of mothers. This is the third Berger student to win a first-authored award at WPA under Professor Kanaya’s guidance. Congratulations to all!

It’s Possible…

Life can be overwhelming. You’ve got classes, lab, sports, a job, and extra-curricular activities to manage—not to mention friends and family who also want to spend time with you. But it’s important to have work-family balance, and you don’t have to tone down your ambitions to maintain it. It doesn’t seem possible, but it is! In this first installment of our “It’s Possible…” series, Vanessa Liu ‘17, Reid Dickerson ‘18, and Andrew Levihn-Coon ’15 talk to us about their incredibly busy schedules, and how they cope with stress and fit in some much needed down-time. We invite you to take a closer look.
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