Department of Psychological Sciences

Senior Hannah Fender is preparing to defend her honor's thesis.

Hannah Fender is entering the home stretch.

She crunched her bachelor’s degree studies into three years, packed them full of research and other activities and now she is staring down the final 10 weeks of her undergraduate college career.

Student sits on Kent State campus

Angela Neal-Barnett, Ph.D., a psychology professor at Kent State University and an expert in the field, emphasizes that triggers for anxiety disorders vary depending on the specific disorder.

Hannah Fender, Kent State senior psychology major.

Soon after her decision to major in psychology at Kent State, someone had suggested to Hannah Fender that she should get involved in research as an undergraduate. So, she signed up to work in the research lab of Clare Stacey, Ph.D., associate professor of sociology, looking into how empathy changes over time in medical students. And that's when Fender was first bitten by the research bug. 

Kent State researchers are kicking off the Student Life Study, an ambitious project that seeks to follow 10,000 students throughout their lifetime to offer help in real time and create a data pool to help inform educational policy.

Kent State researchers are looking for 10,000 students to participate in an ambitious Student Life Study launching this semester. 

Honors College
Alena stands next to her thesis research poster "Translating Music into Words: Musical Expression of Figurative Words" at an exhibition in Portland, Oregon.

Photo of Angela Neal-Barnett, Ph.D., professor in Kent State’s Department of Psychological Sciences within the College of Arts and Sciences

Kent State University Professor Angela Neal-Barnett, Ph.D., from the Department of Psychological Sciences shares her expertise in a Deseret Magazine article about the quarter-life crisis. She discusses the stage of development called “emerging adulthood.”

Photo of Angela Neal-Barnett, Ph.D., professor in Kent State’s Department of Psychological Sciences within the College of Arts and Sciences

ATHENA Akron, a women’s leadership organization in Summit County, Ohio, has named Angela Neal-Barnett, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences within the College of Arts and Sciences at Kent State University, its winner of the 2022 ATHENA Akron Leadership Award. She will receive the award on Nov. 17 at the Hilton Akron/Fairlawn.

Chemistry professor working with student at lab

“Who is Counted and What Counts: Tracking Women’s Engagement in Low-Prestige/High-Workload Service Activities at Kent State University” will examine whether faculty members with underrepresented and/or historically excluded intersecting gender and racial/ethnic identities (IGREs) perform more high-workload, low-prestige service work than their faculty peers.

Division of Research & Economic Development
Out of focus image of a mannequin head with the parts of the brain drawn on it