This 5-year project, funded by the National Science Foundation, has two main goals:

1. Understand the psychological and behavioral processes that support Psychology college students' long-term persistence in STEM, especially among underserved students
   and

2. Develop an AI-based intervention that uses virtual agent-mentors ("virtual mentors") to facilitate career exploration and mentoring in STEM.  

This work will be conducted with Psychology students at California State University, Fullerton, to create the initial, discipline-specific model of STEM persistence and intervention.  Through this project, we will develop a web-based career exploration platform that's tailored to the needs of Psychology students (at CSUF in particular), providing free access to high-quality mentoring and career information.  Knowledge about a variety of factors supporting and impacting students' STEM persistence will also be generated from longitudinal data (survey and interview) obtained from students.

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Relevant links:

CAREER: Improving Persistence of Underserved Students in Psychological Science Using an AI-Based, Personalized Career Exploration Platform (NSF Award # 2237924)

CSUF Press Release: CSUF Professor Awarded Grant for AI-Powered Platform to Help Underserved Students in STEM Subjects 

OC Register Piece: CSUF professor’s AI-powered platform helps students pursuing STEM-related careers

Coronavirus: Student Experiences (CSE) is an online research study focusing on U.S. college students' psychosocial and academic adaptation to the COVID-19 pandemic. Data have been collected each semester since the transition to remote instruction in March 2020, with both quantitative and write-in data collected from students.

We are currently in the process of coding qualitative data from this study, to study how students' psychosocial and academic adaptation has changed over time.

The COACH study is an online research study focused on comparing the effects of single-session online interventions -- based on cognitive techniques used in cognitive-behavioral therapy or in acceptance and commitment therapy -- for stress management on college students' psychosocial well-being. Participants learn then apply the cognitive technique they had learned in a series of daily diaries.