Georgetown College. Georgetown University.

Sarah Boxx is currently working on her honors thesis with Dr. Woolard. (Photo: Roland Dimaya)

By Megan Weintraub

Dr. Jennifer Woolard’s commitment to kids and community organizations is undeniably contagious. By finding ways to bring academic learning to projects in the field, Dr. Woolard has inspired the next generation of community psychologists to change the systems that serve youth. Sarah Boxx, currently a senior Psychology and Studio Art double major, cites Dr. Woolard’s seminar on Children, Families, and the Law as her introduction to the field of community psychology. The class led to her subsequent work in Dr. Woolard’s research lab, the Center for Research on Adolescence, Women, and the Law (CRAWL).

“The thing I love most about the research being done in Dr. Woolard's lab is that it’s so rooted in people's lived experiences and that it has such applicability to the systems it studies,” explains Boxx. “Working in Dr. Woolard's lab has definitely dispelled that image of research as being all white lab coats and artificial environments.” 

Boxx started out doing small research projects and coding videos for a project that had taken place the previous semester. Eventually, she began to accompany Dr. Woolard on fieldwork assignments where they would conduct focus groups to get feedback from D.C. parents whose sons or daughters had been involved in the court system.

Last summer, Boxx used a GUROP grant to work on data collection for the dissertation project of one of Dr. Woolard’s graduate students, Samantha Harvell. The project involves 50-60 interviews with youth who have been detained at the Prince William County Juvenile Detention Center in Manassas. It examines how youths’ judgments of justice affect their overall attitudes about the law and their behavior in the detention center. 

In the future, policy makers and employees of the juvenile justice system could potentially look at this project to pinpoint factors that can improve the effectiveness of the juvenile justice system for youth and staff alike. Boxx is now using the same data from Harvell’s project for her honors thesis.

“For my thesis, I am examining which particular factors within judgments of procedural fairness have the strongest predictive value in a youth's attitudes about the law and behavior in detention,” explains Boxx. “Previous research with adults has demonstrated that a sense of fair treatment, or lack thereof, has an impact on subsequent attitudes and beliefs, and thus on behaviors. My hope is to discover which aspects of a youth's experience with the police, the courts, or the detention center staff contribute most to her judgment of procedural fairness.”

After graduation in May, Boxx hopes to enroll in a Ph.D. program in Counseling Psychology, where she will continue her research in the field.

“I've experienced first hand how closely tied research and life can be to one another, and how important research is for informing policy and practice, from the level of Congress down to that of individual staff persons working with youth and their families on a daily basis,” says Boxx. “It is that dynamic of life and research informing one another that really makes me love being a part of it.”

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