The GRANT Seeker
A spotlight on excellence in grant development by a Hofstra University employee
Dr. Cong Liu
By: Riley Morrison
Dr. Liu is currently working on a multi-study project funded by the National Science Foundation, with one completed and more in progress. The overarching goal of her research is to better understand workplace ostracism, i.e., when an employee feels isolated or excluded, which has a negative impact on their psychological and physical well-being, as well as their work performance.
“The difficulty of studying this form of workplace mistreatment is that unlike overt bullying or abuse, ostracism is passive, and therefore difficult to detect.”
Dr. Cong Liu is a professor of psychology at Hofstra University. For the past 10 years, she has served as the director of the PhD program in Applied Organizational Psychology. Dr. Liu is the section editor of Applied Psychology and is a leader in several other academic roles. Dr. Liu was attracted to Hofstra for the opportunities to “provide a platform to connect with students, conduct research, and transfer research ideas into application.” Her research interests are occupational health psychology, workplace ostracism, and challenge and hindrance stressors, as “little is known about how racial minority employees interpret, respond, and cope with workplace ostracism, posing a tremendous challenge for business leaders to promote an inclusive workplace in an increasingly diverse environment.”
Dr. Liu’s interest in industrial/ organizational psychology began when she completed her bachelor’s degree in psychology at Beijing Normal University and felt that it was too general a focus. While working in human resources, she enjoyed applying her knowledge of psychology, but she realized that she was also interested in understanding and increasing business functionality. This led her to pursue master’s and doctoral degrees in industrial/organizational psychology at the University of South Florida.
Another focus of her research is to better understand how those who experience workplace ostracism feel, how they cope, and what their cognitive processing involves. For example, do they blame themselves, do they blame others, or to what do they attribute the cause of the situation? Understanding how such discrimination manifests within the workplace and how it then affects its targets is crucial to recognizing similar behaviors in the future and providing effective employee coping mechanisms.
Dr. Liu recognizes that “more than 70% of American workers have experienced ostracism at work. The situation is worse among employees with a racial minority background.” International students have approached her with these ambiguous feelings of being left out, which have hindered their sense of belonging when pursuing their graduate studies in the United States.
“Ostracism is a threatening experience. It threatens one’s feelings to belong, sense of control, self-esteem, and meaning for existence. This is detrimental to mental and physical health, and will
lead to alienation, depression, and eventually withdrawal from the workplace,” Dr. Liu explained.
The process of searching and applying for grants is a challenging and time-demanding task, but Dr. Liu persevered through the process by remaining focused on her original values and collaborating with like-minded professional peers. Dr. Liu involves her graduate and undergraduate lab assistants in her research pursuits, while valuing interdisciplinary research.
“Applying for grants was necessary. I have been conducting more complicated research, so I need more support. With this additional support, I can establish a lab, which can help me involve more graduate students in the research project and train them to become independent researchers.”
Dr. Liu collaborates with colleagues in psychology and other disciplines. Much of her research relies on physiological and neuroscientific data, so it is important that she utilize her network of collaborators from varying fields. Next to monetary funding, which satisfies the costs associated with the studies, collaboration is the most valuable and motivating aspect of research production, according to Dr. Liu. She plans to continue with her studies and is expecting her initial study’s publication soon. She already has a pending grant application to the Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee, Hong Kong, for her project titled “The double-edged sword: How workplace ostracism impacts preventative and promotive job performance and its underlying neurocognitive mechanisms.”
Dr. Liu consistently demonstrates her scholarly expertise at Hofstra and beyond. She has dedicated her efforts to producing excellent with the support funding.