Today’s Friday Feature is Lucie Lopez
Lucie is an Undergraduate Student Investigator is Dr. Rhiannon Smith’s Social and Emotional Development Lab. She is currently working on a project through the UConn IDEA Grant Program researching the relationship between participation in free and reduced school meal programs and sense of belonging in school, particularly among adolescents. Her project entails a two part study: the first part is a survey that asks college – aged people to think retrospectively about their experiences receiving free and reduced meals during their K-12 education in CT and how it impacted their sense of belonging. The second part is a survey for parents/guardians and their children in high school who participated in the free and reduced meal program before and throughout the COVID-10 pandemic. She is very excited to analyze her data and see how changes from the COVID pandemic impacted sense of belonging.
Lucie is from Avon, CT and is a senior at UConn, pursuing a dual degree in Psychological Sciences and Spanish. After completing her undergraduate education, she plans on attending graduate school to earn a Ph.D. in School Psychology. She is very passionate that more research in school psychology needs to focus on the social, emotional, and behavioral aspects of learning. With her research she hopes to inform policy allowing all schools to provide universal free meals to students. She is also a teaching assistant in the First Year Experience program, the student coordinator for the language and literacy programs in Community Outreach, and a peer research ambassador in the Office of Undergraduate Research.
Lucie loves to read, listen to music, walk outside, paint/draw, and play with her cat, Gary!
