Earl R. Franklin Fellows
Earl R. Franklin, an alumnus of the College, established a fellowship in 2006 that awards students in the Departments of Psychology and Comparative Human Development merit based funding to conduct summer research. Mr. and Mrs. Franklin had the opportunity to visit the Summer 2013 fellows at a lunch this past April and learn about their honors projects and post-graduation plans. The 2013 Franklin Fellows from the Psychology Department include a Fulbright Scholar, Emily Gerdin, who will spend next year in Israel investigating how growing up in an area of heightened religious conflict influences how children develop beliefs about social categories; Natalie Stepien, who just started a PhD program in Vision Science at the University of California at Berkeley; Brent Rappaport, who is now working at the National Institute of Health studying childhood anxiety with Dr. Daniel Pine thanks to a Postbaccalaureate Intramural Research Training Award; and Anders Hogstrom, who is attending a clinical PhD Program at the University of Connecticut.
The Psychology Department selected four new Franklin Fellows for 2014. Sophie Holtzmann is working with Boaz Keysar and PhD student, Sayuri Hayakawa, to study how using an acquired language can make a difference in decision making. Nick Rekenthaler is doing research with Boaz Keysar, Katherine Kinzler, and Amanda Woodward to investigate the social communicative advantages associated with being bilingual. Leah Malamut’s project with Brian Prendergast will investigate the effects of acute immune stress on reproduction in female Siberian hamsters. Finally, Kiehlor Mack is working with Anne Henly and postdoctoral scholar Allison Trude, to investigate how using metaphorical language may influence various cognitive and social-psychological processes, particularly those involved in creativity and perspective taking.
