She recently learned that she received the full amount requested from the national organization, and she is hard at work, testing volunteers to determine whether having a friend along alleviates symptoms in stressful situations.
Erica Masi, a senior psychology and biology double major from New Hartford, N.Y., was awarded a $1,500 research grant from Psi Chi, the national psychology honor society that gives only 12 to 16 of these highly competitive grants each semester to students across the country, and those primarily at large universities.
"Since biology didn't encompass everything I was interested in," Ms. Masi said, "I added another major in psychology-that way I could better explore how the body works." She's especially interested in becoming a health care practitioner.
Her project, titled "The Impact of Different Types of Friend Support During Psychological Stress on Cardiac Reactivity and Salivary Cortisol Levels," is in process now. Ms. Masi is enlisting student volunteers to be tested to see if having a friend with them, either in the room,
outside the room, or absent, affects their stress level. Assistant professor of psychology, Dr. Melissa VanderKaay Tomasulo, is her adviser on the senior honors thesis project.
Each volunteer subject, Ms. Masi hopes to test 60 in all, will be given a cognitive task that lasts eight minutes. His or her blood pressure and saliva content will be monitored at specific intervals. All data will be recorded into categories of male and female, with or without a friend in the room, a friend nearby or no friend present.
While determining which setting alleviates stress better, Ms. Masi is also learning how to set up and administer a carefully controlled scientific study. She has already learned quite a lot about writing a research grant, developing a CV or curriculum vitae, and detailing a research project budget. She did those parts so well that her grant was funded in the highly competitive Psi Chi atmosphere.
Ms. Masi and her four research assistants, Anna Campbell, a sophomore psychology major from Wilmington, Del., Jenny Pietroski, a junior psychology major from South Paris, Maine; Elizabeth Couser, a senior music major from Melrose, N.Y., and Erika Johnson, a junior psychology major from Everett, Mass., are carrying out the study in a Saint Michael's psychology department lab-a 'double-sided' room that allows the researcher to observe the subject, who cannot see the observers.
The subject will have a blood pressure cusp on his or her arm which is attached to a computer. The subject will also give saliva samples, at a specific hour of the day, before and after the test. Timing will be precise in order to control for normal fluctuations that occur at various times in a person's body rhythms. The subject will also agree not to eat or exercise for a certain period before being tested.
The study mimics a real health setting, Ms. Masi explained. She hopes to publish the results of her work at the end of the study, and in the future she hopes to become a physician's assistant, and possibly pursue health care opportunities abroad.
Ms. Masi, the daughter of Samuel and Diane Masi of New Hartford, N.Y., graduated from New Hartford High School before coming to Saint Michael's.
Saint Michael's College, founded in 1904 by the Society of St. Edmund and headed by President John J. Neuhauser, is identified by the Princeton Review as one of the nation's Best 368 Colleges. A liberal arts, residential, Catholic college, Saint Michael's is located just outside of Burlington, Vermont, one of America's top college towns and less than two hours from Montreal. As one of only 270 institutions nationwide with a prestigious Phi Beta Kappa chapter on campus, Saint Michael's has 2,000 full-time undergraduate students, some 500 graduate students and 200 international students. In recent years Saint Michael's students and professors have received Rhodes, Woodrow Wilson, Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Science Foundation and other grants, and Saint Michael's professors have been named Vermont Professor of the Year in four of the last eight years. The college is currently listed as one of the nation's Best Liberal Arts Colleges in the 2009 U.S. News & World Report rankings.
Photo caption: Dr. Melissa VanderKaay Tomasulo, left, & Erica Masi. Photo by Professor Dave Landers.