Capstone Borine Awards Fall 2024

Each year, graduating senior psychology students complete a project that allows them to explore an area of interest. The Sharon Borine Top Capstone Award was created to acknowledge the students who produce outstanding senior projects. The award selection involved section leaders and faculty members nominating candidates, who were then evaluated and ranked by an ad hoc panel of faculty members. 

Congratulations to the Fall 2024 recipients: Annabel Bruton, Ethan Nguyen, and Keding Chen.

Annabel Bruton

Annabel Bruton

Annabel Bruton has been awarded $250 for the first-place capstone paper “Psychosocial Factors Contributing to Academic Help-Seeking Avoidance: A Review of Literature.” 

Bruton’s curiosity about different academic help-seeking behaviors originates from her work as a section leader within the Department of Psychology and an internship experience with UMN’s Career Services. Despite having many resources available to them, many students don’t take advantage of them, even if they need help. Bruton hopes that understanding the reasons students avoid seeking academic help will better help educators and faculty identify risk factors of avoidant behavior and create environments that support students and foster student success.

Bruton is a Fall 2024 graduate of the University of Minnesota, earning her B.A. in psychology with minors in applied psychology in educational and community settings, as well as cultural studies & comparative literature. During her time at the UMN, Bruton worked as a section leader for PSY 3001W and as the Student Services Lead Manager at the Student Group Resource Center in Coffman Memorial Union. Bruton has also spent the last two semesters volunteering in the Happiness in the Closet Project within the Martin Van Boekel Lab with Dr. Van Boekel in the Department of Educational Psychology. In January, Bruton will be starting her next role as a Financial Aid Counselor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse with plans to pursue her master's degree in the future.

Ethan Nguyen

Ethan Nguyen

Ethan Nguyen received the second-place capstone award and $150 for the paper “Measurement Beyond the Laboratory: Utilizing ecological momentary analysis in social psychology.” Nguyen’s thesis was based on his year-long prior research assistant position in the NICE lab under Moin Syed and his recent participation in Whitney Ringwald's section of PSY 5993. Both had him working with the methodology of ecological momentary assessment in different contexts and at different stages of the research process, giving Nguyen a wide-range of first-hand experience. The capstone paper synthesizes Nguyen’s 1.5 years of lab experiences with ecological momentary assessment, his interest in social psychology, and much of his coursework relating to theory and methods.

Nguyen grew up in San Diego, California before moving here to the Twin Cities to attend the UMN. He graduated this Fall semester with a B.S. in psychology and a minor in philosophy, and will be taking a gap year before applying for graduate school to pursue a Ph.D. in a social psychology program. Outside of school, he is a home cook, photographer, and cat-parent to an 8 month-old kitten with his partner.

Keding Chen

Keding Chen

Keding Chen is the third-place capstone recipient, receiving a prize of $75 for the paper “Study on Smile Configuration with Landmark-based Method.” Advised by Nathanial Helwig, Chen was working on exploring different possibilities for extracting geometric features for smiles in this project, especially engaging with landmark-based methods. In addition, he also tried to discover potential meaningful treatments to deal with check-all-that-apply data. In this paper, he presented his understanding of the holistic picture of the study and avoided the overwhelming part of mathematical derivation so that people can realize the importance of smile configuration and get intuitive thoughts on methodology exploration.

Chen is a fourth-year undergraduate student majoring in psychology and minoring in statistics. He is interested in quantitative psychology specifically, and is willing to pursue graduate study in the future. In his spare time, he loves ballroom dancing, skiing, tennis, and playing board games.

 

Composed by Madison Stromberg, communications assistant.

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