I am lucky to be part of a team of self-motivated young researchers who all bring unique perspectives and research questions to our work exploring undergraduate students’ approaches to challenges and responses to failures. Learn more about them below.
I have also worked with many wonderful students and junior colleagues on past research projects. Read more about them!
Misael Romero
Graduate Student, Chemistry; Emory University
“I am an international student from Mexico. I grew up in a city called Toluca which is really close to Mexico City. I went to college at Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Mexico and received my bachelors degree in chemistry in May 2016. My interests lie at the interface between organic chemistry and biological chemistry, but I am always keen to learn something new. I started grad school at the University of Utah and then transferred to Emory after my first year. Outside of chemistry I like swimming, running, hiking, and climbing. Atlanta is also filled with great restaurants, so something that I’ve picked up is finding new places to eat each time.”
Current Chemistry Research: Developing aptamer-functionalizated membranes capable of removing microcystin-LR from drinking water (Translation: Misael is going to make sure everyone has access to clean drinking water.)
Current Education Research: Modeling relationships among various intrapersonal factors (e.g., growth mindset, fear of failure, etc.) and student outcomes before and after FLAMEnet classroom interventions.
Selected Presentations and Awards: Martha and Bill Dobes Outstanding Graduate Teaching Fellow Award, Dean’s Teaching Fellow, Science ATL Communication Fellow, Henry, M.A., Romero-Reyes, M.*, Charkoudian, L. K., Le, B., Corwin, L. A., & Heemstra, J. M. (2020, February). Mid-semester assessment as a tool for more accurate interpretation of educational intervention effects. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Southeastern Conference on the Teaching of Psychology, Atlanta, GA.
Jenny Yu
Undergraduate Research Assistant, Psychology; Emory University
“I am originally from South Korea, but after living in all three countries: Korea, China, and America, I am still on my journey of shaping my identity. As a transfer to Emory’s class of 2021, I am double majoring in Psychology and Chinese. Traveling and exploring different cultural cuisine are my newfound interests after a recent backpacking trip to Europe. In my free time, I would pin the next destination that I would love to step my foot on and daydream of my ideal retirement plan wandering the world. My [research] interest lies in pursuing how therapy and counseling influence and enhance Asian American families and marriages.
Current research: Characterizing patterns of fear of failure, coping behaviors, growth mindset, and goal orientation among Asian STEM students
Selected Presentations: Yu, J.*, Ulzii-Orshikh, N.*, Henry, M.A., Charkoudian, L. K., Le, B., Corwin, L. A., & Heemstra, J. M. (2020, February). Maladaptive coping predicts fixed mindset in Asian students. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Southeastern Conference on the Teaching of Psychology, Atlanta, GA.
Yicheng (Edward) Xue
Undergraduate Research Assistant, Psychology/Chemistry; Emory University
“Education has been my long-standing passion. If you think about it, I’ve spent more time on education than anything else in my life, so why shouldn’t I learn more about it? I started to appreciate the intricacy and complexity of education as a peer tutor, and under Dr. Henry’s mentorship, I was able to further investigate the influence of education from a quantitative perspective. I joined Emory from Shanghai, China, and I hope I can keep exploring the mechanism behind education as a psychology student.”
Current Research: Exploring the relationship(s) between students’ coping dispositions and fear of failure levels.
Selected Presentations: Xue, Yicheng*, Henry, M.A., and Heemstra, J. M. (2021, April). Undergraduate STEM Students’ Coping Dispositions as Predictors of Fear of Failure. Poster to be presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Virtual meeting.
Hannah Geoffrey
Undergraduate Research Assistant, Chemistry; Emory University
“I am interested in researching belongingness in an online classroom. The Covid-19 pandemic caused most students to leave campus and take classes from a remote location. This migration not only isolates a student physically but also has negative effects on their connection with peers. While we have not started collecting data yet, we hypothesize that there will be a negative correlation between distance learning and belongingness in undergraduate students. I am very grateful for Meredith’s patience and adaptability this past semester. When I enrolled in a research program remotely, I was very nervous as I had never researched before, let alone online. Meredith made the (virtual) space welcoming and provided many resources that allowed me to learn more about the program and figure out what I was interested in continuing to research. I look forward to working with her this next semester and learning how to conduct surveys, run statistical software, and analyze results.”
Current research: Designing and validating survey measures to assess pedagogical practices used by instructors in various online contexts (e.g., fully online vs. hybrid, etc.)
Nasanbayar (Nasa) Ulzii-Orshikh
Undergraduate Research Assistant, Computer Science; Haverford College
“Hailing from Mongolia, I study Computer Science at the intersection of Psychology and Physics at Haverford College. As a student in a Russian Embassy school, I noticed a large disproportion of resources and information throughout post-soviet Mongolian schools. So for the last 3-4 years, I have been working on various educational technology projects to redistribute those resources, and during my freshman summer, I taught a course on Creative Learning to cultivate a feedback driven iterative culture in Mongolian students and expanded the results into a broader research on Computational Thinking at MIT Media Lab. Throughout these experiences, I have gained a huge appreciation for technical skills, whether it is qualitative research or Python, that can be applied in so many creative ways, and thus I am excited to further develop my skill set in the context of technology, business, and society.”
The Southeastern Teaching of Psychology conference (SETOP) provides a great opportunity to share our educational research. 
Chemistry graduate student Misael Romero-Reyes is excited to attend his first education/psychology-based conference. 
Psychology undergrad Jenny Yu makes her research presentation debut at SETOP 2020. 
Graduate student Misael Romero-Reyes presents research at SETOP 2020. 
Psychology undergrad Jenny Yu explains her impressive structural equation modeling at SETOP 2020.
Meredith A. Henry, Ph.D. 