Ivana and Shivani Shine in Sharing their Honors Capstone Projects at AHS Research Day

Ivana and Shivani disseminated their honors capstone projects at AHS Research Day 2023

CPERL's two undergraduate research assistants, Shivani and Ivana, have completed their honors capstone projects and had the wonderful opportunity to present their findings at UIC's Applied Health Sciences (AHS) Research Day! Since joining near the start of the year, Ivana was able to build readiness to design and complete her project that focused on manually classifying participation-focused strategy use among caregivers of young children with developmental need. Shivani joined in May 2022 and has ever since been invited to co-author multiple ongoing studies for building readiness to design and conduct her project that focuses on how caregivers of children and youth with craniofacial differences create participation-focused strategies. Both of them have successfully finalized their capstones and have shown incredible growth in their development as young researchers. We are excited to see how they incorporate their learning while pursuing graduate study and future endeavors.

Mary shares: It has been a joy to have Shivani and Ivana join our lab to build readiness for designing and conducting their honors capstone projects. Each project was nested within an ongoing study led by our lab's alumna, Vera Kaelin, for discovering how caregivers might approach and leverage resources to create strategies for supporting community participation, and gaining confidence in how their participation-focused strategies pattern across diverse populations of young children experiencing disability in the home, daycare/preschool, and community settings. Ivana and Shivani each modeled 'innovation' in designing their projects, 'tenacity' in advancing these projects during a time of significant transition in our lab, and 'quality' and 'mentorship' in preparing their projects for dissemination. It was a delight to see them take the stage, side-by-side, on AHS Research Day as strong stewards of our team. We are excited for how their mentored research experiences will shape their next steps as they prepare for graduate study in public health and psychology.