CAS Student Researchers COMPILATIONS RACHAEL EATON, PH.D. | PHOTOS PROVIDED DEVANSHI PATEL Ph.D. | Clinical Psychology Sixth Year Research Mentor: Dr. Jaimie Arona-Krems Houston How did you begin your research? I joined my first psychology research lab as a freshman and quickly grew to love disseminating research at conferences and community events. As a doctoral student, I found my own research interests by working with families and children, listening to the issues they experience. I now work to better understand stigmas directed at parents and families. How has it had an impact on you? I conduct research on stigmas that people face, specifically why people might stigmatize parents of children with higher weights. Weight-related stigma is pervasive and painful to experience. I hope that the work I do brings awareness to the lived experiences of this community. I recently published my first-authored manuscript in Psychological Science on parental stigma. It’s the second paper to empirically demonstrate that people do stigmatize parents of children with higher weights, and it’s the first to explore a model as to why people do this in the first place. I am now working on extending that work. What are your future plans? My next step is a clinical internship to complete my doctorate. I am looking forward to continuing my research trajectory by collaborating with leaders in our field who are also researching obesity, stigma and families. I think research illuminating the psychology underlying weight-related stigma will have important real-world implications. The College of Arts and Sciences fosters groundbreaking research across its 24 departments. Here are five students doing outstanding work in their fields under the mentorship of CAS faculty. 8 CONNECT 2023
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