As they transition from their Junior to Senior year, PRYDE Scholars are encouraged to seek out summer research experiences to further their interests and skills in youth development beyond the scholarly calendar. This year’s senior cohort took on a range of exciting positions in locations ranging from Ithaca to Southern California. When asked to reflect on their summer experiences, each Scholar had something to say regarding what aspects of their pursuits made it worthwhile.

Many Scholars described new skillsets gained from their summer research positions. Morgan Chadwick, who stayed on Cornell’s campus to work with Dr. Eve De Rosa on the Brainsets for Achievement Project, relayed that working as a data analyst allowed her to hone her skills in “planning, critical thinking, design, execution, and analysis.” Along similar lines, Patrick Crossen said interning at the Center for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders improved his communication skills. One of his main jobs during the summer was to work with both children and parents while coordinating schedules and study sessions for the project. He reflected that working with people of differing ages and backgrounds pushed him to think of creative and empathetic ways to communicate with others. Neha Kaul, who interned for Partnership for a Healthier America, also emphasized communication skills as critically important to her work and connected these ideas to those of equity and inclusion. Neha expressed that “it was really important to realize that every perspective must be taken into account—especially one of equity.” These insights illustrate the value of learning that takes place beyond the classroom.

Alongside developing skills as researchers, scholars also learned to overcome unforeseen challenges. Scholar Adjoa Fosuhema-Kordie worked in NYC as a Cornell Cooperative Extension intern on the Choose Health: Food, Fun, Fitness and Choose Health Action Teens projects. She said that implementing programs for communities required her to accept that “doing work like this means that there will be unexpected turns and twists and challenges” but that “what mattered in the end was how we handled those curveballs.” Engaging with communities and translating research into programming requires flexibility on the part of the researcher, according to the scholars. Gaby Kubi worked with Dr. Anita McGinty at the University of Virginia in the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening Lab, and she stated that the process of executing a research idea “strikes you in a different way when it’s actually happening and has real implications on the work you’re trying to do.” This is because coordinating with “community partners who have their own timelines and their own ideas of what data is necessary, how to organize and store it, etc., can get really messy.” Scholars understood flexibility and open-mindedness as being crucial in successfully involving communities in research.

In contrast to internships off campus, some PRYDE scholars took advantage of the summer break to lead their own research projects. Nahisha Alabre stayed at Cornell to complete an original research project exploring the role of motivation in how religiosity shapes life satisfaction and resilience. Nahisha said having the opportunity to take control of her interests “strengthened” her “capacity to creatively analyze and generate solutions.” She inferred that this would be helpful for her work as a senior Scholar with the final capstone project for the PRYDE program.

In their reflections, the PRYDE Scholars emphasized the utility of seeing firsthand what it is like to translate their knowledge into programs and resources that can be shared with the community. Through this experience, they’ve synthesized the lessons learned from PRYDE thus far and expanded their skills as translational researchers.