Research In Action

Looking back on my path to earning my PhD and pursuing a career in research, my experiences in the Center for Violence Prevention at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) stand out as a defining influence. In my Dominican American family, I am a first-generation college student, and prior to my degrees, I didn’t have a clear blueprint for what a career in science or academia could look like. In 2016, I somewhat naively applied to a research assistant position with the school-based aggression and bullying prevention team in CVP at CHOP right after I completed my undergraduate studies. I was offered the part-time position, after which my mentors introduced me to a community-based participatory research approach to school-based intervention development, implementation and evaluation, and how to integrate best practice science with ideas from students, school staff and families in under-resourced urban communities whose voices are historically under-represented in research. I quickly fell in love with research designed to promote healthy social-emotional development and positive peer relationships among children and developed a passion for data collection in schools and learning how that data are analyzed and interpreted. My CHOP mentors listened to my ideas, welcomed my curiosity, and encouraged me to try new things, including expanding my research role to include serving as a facilitator for the universal PRAISE aggression and bullying prevention program for full classrooms of students and the Friend to Friend small-group program for students at higher risk for using aggressive behaviors with peers. My direct experience working with students in these interventions deepened my understanding of the important role social relationships play in children’s development, and this is a realization that shaped my research interests and career trajectory.

I became inspired to further my education and apply for a PhD so that I could pursue a research career. My CVP mentors, including Tracy Waasdorp, supported my goal and also encouraged me to lead the preparation of a manuscript to maximize my candidacy for competitive PhD programs. I chose to examine how students who experience relational victimization (e.g., harm through rumor spreading, exclusion, and social rejection) struggle with academic engagement in school, which was subsequently accepted for publication and disseminated in presentations at academic conferences. These opportunities as first author showed me that I could make meaningful contributions to the field and deepened my interest in understanding the experiences of students who may be victimized or otherwise marginalized in school.

My CVP mentors helped guide and support my graduate school application process and remained connected with me throughout my time in the Human Development and Family Sciences PhD program at the University of Delaware (UDel). In fact, after developing my own line of research on mattering (i.e., how youth feel seen, valued, and significant in their school environments) under the mentorship of Dr. Roderick Carey at UDel, I had the invaluable opportunity to collaborate with my CHOP mentors and colleagues on my dissertation. Specifically, they allowed me to integrate a measure I developed on mattering into their ongoing school-based intervention study, enabling me to pilot test and examine the validity and reliability of my innovative new tool to understand mattering among children in early elementary school. Dr. Waasdorp also served on my dissertation committee, providing instrumental support for my study and constructive guidance that improved the rigor of my project and opened doors to my future research goals.

I am currently back full-time in CVP at CHOP as a post-doctoral fellow in the Supporting Promising Academic Researchers (SPAR) program, where it genuinely feels like a return home with purpose. I am looking forward to continuing my work here with mentorship from Dr. Waasdorp, in which I seek to expand my theoretical knowledge and translate it into real-world practice by integrating my mattering research into CVP’s longstanding evidence-based intervention research in under-resourced elementary schools while also honing my skills in intervention development, implementation and outcome assessment, advanced statistical modeling, leading research publications, and grant-writing. I feel so lucky to be growing my career in the same environment where I was first introduced to research and where mentors encouraged me to be a curious learner. My unique journey at CHOP exemplifies CVP’s commitment to training and nurturing the next generation of prevention scientists.