Jenessa Shapiro Graduate Research Award

Award Info

Description

About the Award

The Jenessa Shapiro Graduate Research Award provides assistance to a graduate student from an underrepresented background with the cost of conducting research in personality and/or social psychology up to $1,000. Up to two student awards are given per year. This award can be given at any stage of a student’s graduate career; that is, the research does not need to be part of the student’s dissertation.

The award is named in memory of UCLA professor Jenessa Shapiro, who thought it was extremely important to promote diversity and inclusion in her lab, at the university, and in the field more generally. Jenessa took concrete actions to do this in a number of ways, ranging from volunteering for mentorship lunches at professional conferences to serving on committees to address issues of diversity within her departments as well as at the National Institutes of Health. She also engaged in countless other less visible activities to contribute to the goals of diversity, inclusion, and social justice that she never advertised.

Eligibility

Requirements

1. Applicants must be graduate students in personality and/or social psychology in good standing with their university. Applicants must be enrolled full-time (or working on their dissertation research for an equivalent of full-time enrollment regardless of actual registration status).

2. The research may be in any area of social or personality psychology.

3. Applicants must be a member of an underrepresented group in social/personality psychology (these groups include, but are not necessarily limited to, ethnic and racial minorities; first-generation college students; lesbian, gay and bisexual students; transgender students; and students with a physical disability).

4. Applicants cannot have previously won the Jenessa Shapiro Graduate Research Award.

How to Apply

Submission Criteria

A description of the proposed research (no more than 2 pages single-spaced).
One additional paragraph describing the use of funds if awarded
A current CV

Advisor Recommendation

A letter of recommendation from the applicant’s academic advisor is required to complete the application process. Please note that this letter has a maximum length of (1) page, single-spaced. Please communicate to the faculty member who will write your recommendation letter the importance of adhering to this maximum page limit. In addition, please do not submit more than one letter of recommendation; only one will be forwarded for review. The letter writer will submit his/her letter on-line.

How to Submit

Submissions for this award are closed.

Past Recipients

2019

Lucy De Souza, The American University of British Columbia

After receiving her B.A./M.A. in psychology at Wesleyan University, Lucy is excited to be working towards her Ph.D at UBC. Drawing from intersectional and Black feminist theory, Lucy's research focuses on how race/ethnicity may distinctively shape women's experiences/perceptions of women in male-dominated spaces, such as in STEM fields. Her research also revolves around understanding allyship, investigating the social-psychological factors that may inhibit men from confronting sexism and perceived costs/benefits of interracial dialogue from both minority and majority group perspectives.

Danica Kulbert, Tulane University

Danica is a third year graduate student at Tulane University. I work with Dr. Laurie O'Brien and am interested in intergroup relations and how different factors (e.g., perspective-taking, attributions) impact ingroup and outgroup interactions.

Jaboa Lake, Portland State University

Jaboa Lake (she/her) is a PhD candidate in Applied Social Psychology at Portland State University, researching intraminority relations and coalition building in collective action towards social change, community responses to pervasive discrimination, and contemporary forms of systemic bias, with an intersectional lens. She earned her BA in psychology from the University of California, Merced, and her MS in applied psychology from Portland State University. Jaboa engages with research both in her role as a graduate researcher, and as research consultant for culturally-specific non-profits on projects that address hate crime reporting and documentation, local policy engagement by communities of color, and culturally specific education equity programs. She identifies as a liberation researcher and a grassroots community organizer.

Angelica Leigh, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Angelica's research takes a dynamic approach to studying diversity and in doing so, she explores the often overlooked experiences and identities that may alter the effects of diversity in organizations. Specifically, her work examines the spillover effects of “mega-threats”—large scale diversity related societal events—on organizations. Angelica’s research has been published in the Academy of Management Review, she is the recipient of the M. Wayne DeLozier UNC Ph.D. Student Fellowship Award, and SPSP’s Outstanding Research Award. Angelica is the former president of the KPMG Ph.D. Project Management Doctoral Student Association.

Ariel Mosley, University of Kansas

Ariel Mosley is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Kansas, and a member of Monica Biernat's Stereotyping and Judgement Lab. She received her bachelor's degree in Psychology from California State University Sacramento in 2014, and her master's degree in Psychology at the University of Kansas in 2016. Broadly, her research examines issues of social power, identity threat, intersectionality, and group-based biases. Her dissertation focuses on how identity concerns and discrepancies of cultural awareness lead to different perceptions of cultural appropriation among racially dominant and subordinated groups. Overall, her goal is to examine how cultural biases and group-based discrepancies in social power lead to processes of prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination.

Eugene Ofosu, McGill University

Eugene Ofosu is a Ph.D. student in Social Psychology at McGill University. His research focuses on prejudice and discrimination across regions and time. More specifically, he studies how stable regional prejudice is, its causes, and its societal outcomes.

Zachary Reese, University of Michigan

Zachary is currently a Ph.D. candidate in social psychology at the University of Michigan. Zach conducts research on social comparison and close relationships along with advisors Stephen Garcia and Robin Edelstein. In one line of inquiry, Zach investigates precursors of competitive sabotage. In another line, he studies how comparisons to a romantic partner impact one's relationship quality. Zach's work integrates dispositional, situational, and physiological perspectives to better understand the antecedents and consequences of competitive behavior. Zach is also a proud alum of Goucher College (2016) where he received his liberal arts degree in psychology.

Contact

2020 Chair

Miguel Unzueta, unzueta@ucla.edu

SPSP Awards Coordinator

Brannan Meyers, awards@spsp.org

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