Many people who suffer with mental illness never seek treatment simply because they are scared of what other people will think, said Caroline Mann, a psychology professor.
Mann hopes her current research will help psychologists better grasp and manage the social stigma surrounding mental illness.
Mann, who was a visiting professor of psychology during the 2010-2011 academic year, worked with students to develop a method of detecting prejudice against the mentally ill even when people will not admit to the negative feelings.
The initial study only included 30 Randolph College students. However, Mann believes the results indicated the survey could actually detect stigma and deserves more study.
Mann was surprised and impressed when she learned that Randolph College had a research program with funding. In addition to grants to pay for research expenses, the Summer Research Program provides stipends for students. “I was going to do research regardless, but I wouldn’t have been able to do research with students,” she said.
Doan traveled with Mann to the University of Tennessee, where they presented some of their findings to a group working to reduce mental illness stigma.
“The Summer Research Program enabled her to gain experience not just with scientific research, but also with public speaking,” Mann said.
“He is a seasoned professional that understands what it takes to develop a winning program and cares deeply about the development of his players in the classroom, in the community and on the field." - Tina Hill, director of athletics
But this summer, Jerry Wells ’12 and Mara Amster, an English professor, turned to technology to compare the narratives of 17th-century prostitution with news reports of the 2008 Eliot Spitzer scandal, in which the former New York governor was exposed as a client of a high-priced prostitution ring. Their project was part of the Summer Research Program, an intense eight-week program that provides students with the opportunity to work closely with faculty on various research topics.
The database was Wells’ solution for organizing thoughts on the large number of articles he and Amster collected. “I knew there was no way I'd remember the first article when I got to the fifth one, much less the 50th,” he said.
Wells and Amster used the spreadsheet to record how many times each article used various words to describe Spitzer’s involvement with an escort service. They also made judgments about how each article weighed moral, sexual, and financial themes.
Their research revealed that the narrative about this issue has changed in the past 300 years. Earlier literature focused on the moral failures of the women involved in prostitution. Modern texts focus instead on why a man would hire an escort. “We still want to blame someone, but that blame has shifted,” Amster said.
Other aspects about the narratives have not changed, including society’s general anxiety about gender and markets, Amster said.
Wells has participated in the Summer Research Program for two years. He likes participating because it gives him the opportunity to earn income—student participants are paid a stipend—while being able to focus on in-depth research with professors.
The research from this project will be used as the final chapter in The Purchase of Pleasure: Representing Prostitution and the Early Modern Market, a book Amster is currently writing.
The Randolph students and professors provided a weeklong institute for about 60 Lynchburg-area teachers, followed by a science camp for children at the Jubilee Family Development Center in Lynchburg.
The program showed the teachers and students that there is more to science than lab coats, beakers, diagrams, and chemical symbols, said Meredith Humphreys ’12.
“Science can be fun,” she said. “It’s not just what you see in the classroom.”
Humphreys said there is a shortage of scientists in America because young people are not as interested in the subject. The summer science program aims to excite an interest in science. It also collects data to measure whether hands-on experiments improve science education and promote an interest in science.
The teachers in the institute and the students in the science camp completed the Draw-A-Scientist Test, which measures attitudes toward science by examining someone’s drawing of a scientist and looking for signs of stereotypes, such as goggles and lab coats.
The Randolph students filmed the experiments to provide content for a website that provides science experiment ideas and lesson plans for elementary and middle school teachers.
The program was funded by a $140,000 grant from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia and by the College’s Summer Research Program.
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