Lily Ann Long graduated from Eastern Washington University in 2020 with a major in Psychology, minoring in Applied Developmental Psychology with a certification in suicide assessment, treatment, and management. She was selected as an EWU McNair Scholar in March 2018 and completed her 2019 summer research A Thematic Analysis of First-Generation Students' Experiences of Shame in University with faculty mentor Dr. Aryn Zeihnert. She is interested in how experiences of marginalization and oppression take shape within systems that have the power to address these experiences. She is specifically interested in using qualitative measures to understand how to provide culturally-competent interventions and resources to meet the needs of a diverse body of people within academia and the mental health care system. At Eastern Washington University, she was a research assistant in Dr. Martin’s social psychology lab researching patterns within intimate relationships, stigmatization of mental health disorders, and gender and sexuality as they relate to identity politics. As a research assistant in Dr. Kolts’ clinical psychology lab she is running participants in a study aimed at exploring the effects of different mindfulness techniques. In Dr. Kolts’ lab she is also using interpretive phenomenological analysis to research problematic anger in a sample of adult men.
With the mentorship of Dr. Ziehnert and Dr. Kolts she completed the McNair Summer Research Internship (MSRI). During the MSRI she interviewed first-generation low-income students about their experiences of marginalization, oppression, and shame in higher education. She presented the findings at the 12th International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities at Harvard Medical School. The manuscript for this study has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities and is currently in the peer-review process. She was also selected for the Len Stern Endowed Research Award for her research on shame as a function of academic distress, which is funding her to present at the Western Psychological Association (WPA) Conference in Spring 2020.
Additionally, she was a teaching assistant for Dr. Ziehnert’s Introduction to Statistics and Theories of Personality courses where she proctored exams and lectured on stigmatization of mental health disorders and poverty as a barrier to mental health treatment. She has completed an internship with First Call for Help Spokane and the Crisis Text Line as a crisis advocate.
Lily Ann was accepted into a PsyD program at Point Park University where she began attending in Fall 2020.
McNair Faculty Research Mentor 2019: Dr. Aryn Zeihnert
Research Title: A Thematic Analysis of First-Generation Students’ Experiences of Shame in University
Abstract: The purpose of this study was to explore first-generation students’ experiences of shame as they relate to academic contexts, with the intention of furthering the discussion about effective university interventions. Sohn’s (1977) model of ‘morally un/neutral affects’ was considered to demonstrate that attributions of academic performance to shame often have significant affective impacts. Brown’s (2006) Shame-Resilience Theory (SRT) was also considered to demonstrate how experiences of shame affect marginalized individuals. In this study, 7 first-generation, undergraduate students at Eastern Washington University participated in semi-structured interviews. These interviews consisted of 11 questions and lasted approximately 90 minutes. A thematic analysis of transcripts identified themes of shame related to feelings of institutional connectedness, access to resources, external responsibility, and persistence and resilience. These findings further implicate the vitality of university resources for non-traditional students. Additional research exploring the relationship between shame, academic performance, and marginalized identity is needed.
