First Can Hurt: How First-Gen Neuro Students Face a Disadvantage

First Can Hurt:

How First-Gen Neuro Students

Experience Disadvantage

Nisha Lingam

Image courtesy of Creative Commons.

Without a doubt, college provides new opportunities as well as new challenges and stresses to its students. However, depending on their background and their school’s characteristics, students may experience college differently, especially when it comes to academics. Some students might face different issues based on their background. To better understand the factors behind them, Dr. Monica Gaudier-Diaz conducted her observational study on “Motivation, Belongingness, and Anxiety in Neuroscience Undergraduates,” with a focus on firstgeneration students. Dr. Gaudier-Diaz is a post-doctoral scholar in the Seeding Postdoctoral Innovators in Research and Education program, and currently works with Dr. Keely Muscatell at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Social Neuroscience & Health Lab. She is interested in the effects of stress on human physiology and psychology and neuroscience education, which is what led to her to concentrate on students majoring in neuroscience for her study. Considering the rising popularity of neuroscience programs in the U.S., she wanted to explore certain psychosocial factors that could result from university type and other demographics which may ultimately impact neuroscience majors’ academic success. More specifically, she focused on first-generation students, due to research on first-generation neuroscience majors being more uncommon and insightful to her field of study. “I’m really interested—as a minority student

Dr. Monica Gaudier-Diaz

myself—in helping minority students do well in school,” Dr. Gaudier-Diaz says. “A lot of studies have shown that individuals from minority groups tend to have lower grades, and my idea is to understand why and what are the factors that we can target to help them overcome whatever difficulties they have.” 1 More precisely, the three principal psychosocial factors studied were motivation levels regarding the goal of obtaining a neuroscience degree, sense of belongingness, and anxiety, all of which were measured using several different scales. Compiling these prevalidated questionnaires, Dr. Gaudier-Diaz and her team created an online survey to which 756 students responded, representing 69 universities across the U.S. The questionnaires evaluated the different aspects of the factors in question. For example, aspects of motivation included “expectancy (i.e., do they think they can do well in neuroscience courses?), value (i.e., do

Figure 1. Visual depiction of mediational analysis used to relate psychosocial factors to generation in college. Image courtesy of Dr. Monica Gaudier-Diaz.

they want to do well in neuroscience coursework?), and cost (i.e., do they have the time, energy, and resources to do well in neuroscience classes?).” 2 To measure sense of belongingness, two scales were used to gauge the student’s opinion of themselves regarding their social environment and how well they feel they belong. Trait and test anxieties were investigated as well. The survey also contained questions regarding demographics, such as gender, and used GPA on a 4.0 scale as a measure of academic achievement. Afterwards, statistical analysis, including a mediational analysis, was performed to obtain evidence of a correlation between generation and academic success, as mediated by the tested psychosocial factors: “Mediational analysis allows you to explore how much of this correlation [between grade point average and generation in college] is due to a third factor.” Dr. Gaudier-Diaz and her team found that test-anxiety, trait-anxiety, and default motivation mediated the association. 1 Essentially, default motivation (when the student lacks better options) became a specific factor in mediating academic success between first and continuing generation students, while differences in test and trait anxiety played similar roles in the medication of GPA and academic success. Other statistical analysis methods indicated that college type (National Liberal Arts College, National University, Regional University, Regional College) partly had an impact on motivation; students at Liberal Arts Colleges tended to place higher value on neuroscience coursework compared to those at National Universities. Although gender differences were not predicted, they found that females tended to experience higher expectation-driven motivation, test-anxiety, traitanxiety, and interest in succeeding in their neuroscience coursework. Most interestingly, they found that firstgeneration students experienced higher motivation from not having a better substitute for their education path (also called default motivation), test-anxiety, and trait-anxiety in comparison to continuing-generation students who reported higher GPAs and experienced higher expectation-driven motivation and personal/ intellectual growth. 2 “This data emphasizes that there are psychosocial and academic differences based on generation in college and suggests that by targeting these psychosocial factors we (i.e., educators) might be able to help students from underrepresented backgrounds successfully complete their college degree,” Dr. Gaudier-Diaz explains. 1 In regards to challenges that came with the study, Dr. Gaudier-Diaz expressed her interest in obtaining evidence of the body’s physical changes in response to psychological processes: “In other studies that we do in our laboratory, we have participants come in the lab, we examine inflammation in their blood and hormones in their saliva, so I would’ve loved to get some physiological markers of the population in this study.” 1 In addition, since there were no significant differences in the sense of belongingness based on generation in college, Dr. Gaudier-Diaz also would have liked to study this factor in more detail. She mentions the challenge of acquiring data from a representative population as only students from 69 of the 168 total universities offering neuroscience as a major responded to the survey. Because the study has just introduced research on first-generation students in the field of neuroscience, there is still much to investigate, including future research on UNC students. Nevertheless, the survey provided insightful data and could lead to the development of new intervention strategies directly focusing on anxiety and motivation in firstgeneration students. Dr. Gaudier-Diaz’s research will certainly provide basis for gaining a better understanding of the factors that affect first-generation students and will open doors for further study of factors mediated by other student characteristics including major, mental illness, and other demographics. To follow up on this study, she is continuing her research on anxiety through the study of psychosocial factors and physiological responses to exam stress in UNC students. The study is currently in the process of obtaining results by tracking stressrelated biological markers such as cortisol (in the saliva) and inflammatory cytokines (in the blood), while also using questionnaires that gather data on psychosocial factors involved. Additionally, starting next semester, Dr. Gaudier-Diaz will be joining the teaching faculty in the psychology and neuroscience department: “Now that I am officially joining the department here, I’m really interested in investigating whether these findings replicate among neuroscience students here. By tackling this problem, I will be able to help students.” 1

References

1. Interview with Monica M. Gaudier-Diaz, Ph.D. 1/31/20. 2. Gaudier-Diaz, M. M.; Sinisterra, M.; Muscatell, K. A.; The Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education 2019, 17(2), A145-A152.

Image courtesy of Creative Commons.