Nominated by Meenal Rana

Britney is a consummate student, an emerging scholar and an empathetic leader in the field of Child Development and Psychology. Britney is graduating in May 2020, with her bachelor’s in Liberal Studies Child Development, with an emphasis on Child and Family Services and a minor in Psychology. She possesses many skill sets that make her not only an excellent student but also an emerging professional in the field—she has an acumen for understanding issues in depth using multiple perspectives, conceptualizing research problems, and planning the steps to answer a research question at hand. Britney is a rare combination of heart and mind, which I think is critical in developing future leaders in the field. She is an avid advocate of evidence-based practices.

Britney is a part of the evaluation project for one of my programs, “Rural Youth Volunteers in India”. It was an 11-weeks long summer program supported by the U.S. Mission to India, where Humboldt State University (HSU) students were paired with Lady Irwin College students (7 HSU and 8 Lady Irwin College students) to work in two rural communities in north India. Britney worked with another student in the department to plan the evaluation design and tools, took time-intensive CITI training and worked on the IRB application, conducted interviews with students and faculty from Humboldt State University, transcribed them, and coded them.

Additionally, she edited an Environmental Education curriculum designed by the students, who traveled to India for the program. Because of this research experience, we collaborated on the final report of the program. Currently, Britney is collaborating with a graduate student from Texas Tech University, 2 students and 2 faculty members writing a paper: “International and Intercultural Collaboration in Experiential Learning”. Britney wants to become a School Psychologist; she has recently applied for the HSU Master’s Program in School Psychology. Currently, she is interning with a local school psychologist for 120 hours, providing assistance in data collection (i.e., surveys and observations), leading small group activities for teenagers, and shadowing the day-to-day work of a school psychologist.