Georgetown College. Georgetown University.

Junior Claire Nugent is planning to attend graduate school in Psychology after her experience with the Georgetown Early Learning Program.

Claire Nugent loves working with children. She has tutored children in low-income, inner city communities. She has spent time with children in the St. Louis Crisis Nursery, a temporary childcare facility for families in crisis. A Hoya swimmer who holds Georgetown’s 200 butterfly record, she has taught mentally disabled children how to swim. So when Nugent discovered the original research being conducted in Dr. Rachel Barr’s Early Learning Project laboratory, the young Psychology student simply had to participate.

“After talking with Dr. Barr and hearing about the research that the ELP does in terms of child development, I decided that I would love the opportunity to be involved in research looking at the impact of media use on a child’s development,” Nugent says. “The ELP provided me with an opportunity to combine my interests with my major field.”

Nugent was a GUROP fellow in the summer of 2006, which allowed her to get hands-on experience conducting psychology research in the Early Learning Project. During the school year, Nugent works in the lab, leading a group of undergraduates in conducting a study that seeks to understand the relationships, origins, and consequences for media use with children under the age of 2. The students review data collected from parents and childcare providers on their knowledge of media use policy and media usage in the childcare setting.

“The GUROP program is an excellent opportunity to get involved in research as an undergraduate,” Nugent says. “I have been offered the opportunity to work on this research project to better understand how research projects are set up and conducted. I am involved in the data analysis. I will also be working on the final paper for this project and will have the opportunity to have my name on the published paper. At many other schools, comparable experiences are only offered to graduate students.”

Nugent, a Georgetown junior, credits the Early Learning Project with getting her started in thinking about directions for her career in psychology. She is considering a doctorate in Clinical Psychology and says that her experience with the Early Learning Project has her already contemplating whether she wants to go into research or direct patient care. She says her work has given her a solid grasp of psychology research methodologies, which will help her in graduate school regardless of her ultimate career path. As an extra bonus, she was able to tie in her Spanish minor.

“The project I worked on this past summer required me to contact childcare providers and ask them questions,” she explains. “Many of the providers did not speak English fluently or at all. Likewise, many of the student researchers in our lab did not speak Spanish.  This created a language barrier that stood in the way of getting things done. I was able to use my knowledge of the Spanish language to facilitate the progress of the study, but there was still some miscommunication. Working with the ELP helped me to realize how important it is for me to have knowledge of a second language.”

But Nugent says her favorite part of the Early Learning Project is the unique opportunity she has as an undergraduate to work with graduate students and one-on-one with a professor.

“In my regular classes, I work mainly with other undergraduates, but through the ELP, I have had the chance to develop a close relationship with a faculty member and several graduate students,” she says. “Dr. Barr is a great research mentor.”

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