Thank you for your interest in the URC Valentine Research Grams! All money fundraised through this event will directly support club members’ research initiatives, such as presenting work at conferences.
Cash can be given to any URC member, and you can schedule a pickup for cash or checks by emailing acwiek1@students.towson.edu
Checks should be made out to Towson University with “Undergraduate Research Club” on the memo line. Mail checks to Dr. Alison McCartney, Towson University; Dept of Political Science; 8000 York Rd; Towson, MD 21252.
See the Research Gram Menu below and choose whom you
would like to present their research and to whom.
We will start delivering grams Feb. 15.
Research Grams can be ordered using the Microsoft Form below:
https://forms.office.com/r/nKn24eY64L
Explaining the Political Participation of Transgender Americans
By: Samuel Smith
While there is much research explaining why Americans, and many subgroups of Americans, participate in politics, there is little research specific to transgender Americans. While transgender Americans are disadvantaged in terms of resources and social status, they participate at high rates, contradicting much research in political science on participation. The Civic Voluntarism model, in particular, with its focus on resources, suggests that participation should be low among this group. That said, it may still be an important predictor of participation among those who are trans. We argue that a key component of explaining their participation is their identity as a marginalized group and their connectedness to the transgender community, especially their sense of linked fate. We will go further as well and look at other intersecting identities and issues that can explain the rates of civic participation among transgender Americans. This study is the first step in empirically evaluating this theory using the 2015 US Transgender Survey (USTS). The USTS includes a broad sample of self-identified transgender Americans, allowing a more thorough picture of this group and their political behavior.
Afterschool As An Antidote: How Afterschool Programs Can Be Used As Gun Violence Reduction Tool.
By: Danielle McNerney
As of May 2023, one in four Baltimore gunshot victims who were 18 or under were shot near a school in the 2022-2023 academic year. In 2022, 84 shooting victims in Baltimore were victims 17 and younger; the threat of gun violence for Baltimore youth continues to rise as nearly one in three shooting victims in 2023 were high school aged or younger (Little, Conarck, and Vuttaluru 2023). Gun violence cripples families, devastates communities, and often morphs into a deadly cycle of community members who witness violence becoming perpetrators in the future. Although preventing gun violence is a multifaceted issue that cannot be resolved through only one means of prevention, a powerful tool for combating youth exposure to gun violence is the implementation of afterschool programming for students. Afterschool programs provide students protection from the increased threat of victimization that occurs when youth lack parental guidance between the afterschool hours of 3-6pm. Currently, through partnerships with the city, faith-based organizations, and Chicago Public Schools, all Chicago Public School all students have access to afterschool care through the “After School Matters” program that operates across the city. While Baltimore City offers numerous afterschool programs for students, the standardized approach that is taken in Chicago is not replicated in Baltimore City. Instead, a “patchwork” of programming is created. Some students have more opportunities for afterschool care than others because afterschool care depends heavily on the success of individual community partnerships created between individual schools rather than an entire system. I propose that afterschool programming is one pillar of gun violence prevention that Baltimore City officials must consider strengthening and hypothesize that if a standardized afterschool program was implemented for all Baltimore City students to access, the striking threat of gun violence that Baltimore City youth currently face may lessen.
Social Anxiety Across Genders and Sexualities
By: Jay Calkins
Transgender and nonbinary people have rates of anxiety that are almost three times as high as cisgender people. This study compares level of social anxiety between transgender and nonbinary, cisgender LGBQ+, and cisgender heterosexual individuals and looks for correlations between social anxiety, dysphoria, and body image. Data were collected through an anonymous survey that included the Social Interactions Anxiety Scale (SIA), Centre for Appearance Research Salience Scale and the Centre for Appearance Research Valence Scale (CARSAL/CARVAL), and questions about sexual orientation and gender identity. Participants who identified as transgender or nonbinary also scored their social and physical dysphoria. A one-way ANOVA found that transgender or nonbinary participants had significantly higher SIA scores than cisgender LGBQ+ or cisgender heterosexual participants. Pearson’s r tests showed that there was a correlation between physical dysphoria and CARSAL/CARVAL score and between CARSAL/CARVAL score and SIA score, but there was not a correlation between physical or social dysphoria and SIA score. This indicates that increased rates of social anxiety among transgender or non binary individuals may not be explained by their experiences with dysphoria.
By: Parker Cross
Thousands of children go through the foster care and adoption process each year and their lives depend on the family who adopts them. Therefore, the influences behind each family’s decision to adopt has a significant real-world impact. What affects a person’s decision on whether to adopt? This research focuses on testing the theoretical model described by Willis-Hepp (2019), analyzing what influences someone’s pathway to parenthood, in order to see how prospective parents come to an informed, unified decision on whether to adopt. Years ago, George Mead created Symbolic Interactionism (SI), which explains that the idea of ‘self’ develops via constant, recursive negotiation between ‘I’ and ‘me’, where the ‘I’ is the present component of self that responds in the moment and in context, and the ‘me’ reflects other people’s responses to one’s behaviors, once internalized. He introduces the idea of generalized other, which is the ability to understand and interpret social norms and social cues from environments. Using symbolic interactionism to see why someone adopts or not can help to understand an adopted child’s upbringing. The question arises: could symbolic interactionism influence the decision-making process to adopt in young adults? While adoption may seem like a relatively individual choice, the ‘generalized other’ can greatly influence a person’s decision which will change the path of a child’s life.
History of Assimilation on Indigenous American Public Health
By Bethany Fuss
There are disproportionately higher mortality rates among Indigenous American populations in the United States compared to non-Indigenous American populations in similar geographic areas. A 2021 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report revealed that the life expectancy for Indigenous Americans is 65.2 years old, which is equivalent to the average life expectancy of Americans in 1944. This paper investigates disparities that specifically impact Indigenous American populations, apart from their primarily rural locations. Factors impacting Indigenous Americans are often dismissed as being similar to those impacting rural populations, but significant differences exist. Investigating these differences was done by comparing governmental reports on healthcare resources for Indigenous Americans and scholarly sources describing rural public health practices. By isolating factors impacting Indigenous American populations, it became evident that the history of assimilation in the US significantly impacts quality of care for these populations. The historical context of erasing Indigenous American identity to force them to fit into the Eurocentric American identity through assimilation contributes to a lack of understanding of Indigenous Americans and their needs. This lack of understanding contributes to the lack of funding of the Indian Health Service (IHS), the most accessible means of healthcare for Indigenous Americans. Investigating these factors is imperative in creating meaningful change in healthcare for Indigenous Americans.
Can Dogs Represent Other Hidden Canines Using Hearing and Vision?
By Kaija Harlow
Animal vocalizations provide information about the physical attributes of callers (i.e., body size and age). These vocalizations are especially significant for domestic dogs, due to the wide range of size variation seen across different breeds. Previous research has found that, upon hearing a growl and being visually presented with different-sized dog models, domestic dogs can adapt their response by estimating the other canine’s size relative to their own. Despite this research, no studies on dogs have examined whether they can represent other canines with restricted visual access to that individual (i.e., a dog that was once visible is now hidden from view). This project seeks to investigate if dogs can represent multiple hidden conspecifics using both hearing and vision. Dog participants observed a pre-recorded video of a puppy and adult seemingly move across a room, into, and out of a hidden crate. Soon after, participants heard a series of dog barks whose sound was derived from the location of the crate. Participants experienced both a consistent condition (in which a bark was “expected” to come from the crate) and inconsistent condition (in which a bark was not “expected” to come from the crate). Videos were coded for time spent looking towards the TV screen and crate, and data was analyzed using a paired-samples Bayesian t-test. We predicted that participants would spend more time looking toward the crate upon experiencing an inconsistent condition. Data from pilot trials have supported this hypothesis, suggesting that dogs can understand the position of an occluded conspecific in space and time. In addition, data received from experimental results may suggest real-world applications to behavioral management strategies for dog-reactive dogs, helping to decrease the rate of domestic dog attacks against other canines.
Clandestine Catastrophe:
How a Public Pandemic Led to a Private Epidemic of Child Abuse Across the United States
By Madisyn Ames
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) virus rapidly spread and devasted communities across the globe within six months of its first known cases in December 2019. Virtually no country was spared from the ravages of the virus, and COVID-19 thus developed into a public health emergency in the United States. However, it soon became clear that the dangerous pathogen was not the only public health emergency resulting from the global pandemic. In fact, the word “public” may not be the best descriptor for this additional emergency, as it occurred largely behind closed doors in the privacy of homes throughout the nation. While existing data preliminarily suggests that the national child abuse rate actually went down during the first year of the pandemic (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 2022), this StoryMap on the ArcGIS platform endeavors to visualize the differences in child abuse rates from 2019 through 2021 between the 50 states, as well as demonstrate the reasons why the decreasing overall child abuse rate in the United States may be deceptive. This study utilizes data from the Children’s Bureau’s Child Maltreatment reports for the years 2019, 2020, and 2021 to create gradient maps comparing rates of child abuse as well as caregiver risk factors, such as alcohol abuse and the receipt of public assistance (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 2021–2023). Overall, the findings reveal that even if the country’s rate of child abuse decreased in 2020 and 2021, the shift to virtual learning might have made teachers less likely to report abuse cases or fail to notice them altogether. Furthermore, despite the apparent decline, data from crisis hotlines and American emergency rooms advise that the number of child abuse cases may have stayed the same or even increased (Ortiz et al., 2021; Swedo et al., 2020). Consequently, it becomes even more critical that in the event of another national emergency, society does not overlook the trauma occurring to our children and that individuals who were abused during the last pandemic receive the support and encouragement they need to recover and lead happy, contented lives.
Gender in the Roman Empire
Norms, Perceptions, and Exceptionalities of a Binary System
By Lillian Norbeck
The concepts of masculinity and femininity dominated life in the Roman Empire. This gender binary pervaded politics, culture, and society. Nevertheless, some Romans defied gender norms through behaving in manners which contradicted their biological sex. One such individual is Elagabalus, a third century emperor whose effeminate appearance and mannerisms prompted criticism from contemporaries and made him deeply unpopular amongst his subjects. In taking on female titles, roles, and behaviors, Elagabalus lost the authority typically associated with masculine Roman men. Like Elagabalus, eunuchs were the target of derision from traditional and conservative Romans who saw them as weak, effeminate, and therefore not truly men. Literary examples also illustrate the consequences of violating gender norms, including Hermaphroditus, a man who is combined with a woman in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. A biologically male skeleton found in a stereotypically female burial context in Roman Britain further illustrates the complexity of Roman gender. Although Romans who violated gender norms were subject to harsh scrutiny, not all individuals adequately fit within the traditional gender binary. Consequently, perceptions of gender in the Roman Empire are far more nuanced than they appear upon a cursory glance at femininity and masculinity in the Roman world.
ISIS’s Use of Human Trafficking
By: Jordan McConville
Since its creation in 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has been proven to participate in the human trafficking of minority women. This study expands on the research related to ISIS’s use of human trafficking to uncover the extended strategic use of human trafficking by the terrorist group. Through use of government sources on human trafficking and on terrorism, primary sources as published by ISIS, and victim testimony, this research serves as an expansion on the previously understood uses of human trafficking by ISIS. In addition to trafficking women for sexual slavery, ISIS also traffics prisoners to be sold for profit, and children for forced criminality. Additionally, as the definition of human trafficking is better understood, the recruitment practices of ISIS are considered human trafficking when the recruits are exploited after joining and are persuaded to join through deception or coercion. This study serves to fill the research gap in how repatriation is affected by the designation of foreign fighters as victims of human trafficking.