{"id":53,"date":"2022-09-30T01:49:16","date_gmt":"2022-09-30T01:49:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/?p=53"},"modified":"2022-09-30T01:49:18","modified_gmt":"2022-09-30T01:49:18","slug":"student-research-spotlight-nathaniel-cordova","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/2022\/09\/30\/student-research-spotlight-nathaniel-cordova\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Research Spotlight: Nathaniel Cordova"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nathaniel Cordova is a full-time undergraduate student at the University of Michigan-Flint slated to graduate with a Bachelor\u2019s in Psychology in December 2022. Shortly after he transferred from Youngstown State University in Ohio, he asked psychology professor Thomas Wrobel what he should do to better prepare for a PhD or Master\u2019s program. Wrobel told him the best thing he could do is find research that interests him and get involved. Wrobel pointed him to the Infoready<\/a> site and, because he was so enthusiastic, brought Cordova in on his own research project, supported by the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program<\/a>. The two recently completed a study comparing vaccine uptake and hesitancy among undergraduate students before and after the COVID pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wrobel had started the vaccine hesitancy study in 2019, before the COVID pandemic and the political climate placed vaccines in the center of a heated debate in America. In addition to concerns with needle phobia, the project looked at a wide range of psychological barriers. The study included concerns about the vaccines themselves, risk and social benefit perceptions, negative attitudes towards vaccines, lack of experience with illness and knowledge of vaccines. Cordova worked on data analysis for the first study and helped develop a post-COVID survey to measure changes post-COVID. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t good that the pandemic happened,\u201d Cordova said, \u201cbut it was pretty great that we were able to take advantage of the opportunity to study how it affected students\u2019 perceptions of vaccines.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Cordova
Cordova and Wrobel all set to present their findings at the MPA in Chicago.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Due to national and university vaccine mandates, Cordova and Wrobel found that student uptake was not affected, but there was increased hesitancy and anxiety around vaccines. They concluded that this may reflect a change in attitude toward vaccinations in general and the COVID-19 vaccines in particular. They pointed to a need for a more general sample than the undergraduate students in the two cohorts to seek more comprehensive data. The two presented their findings at the Midwestern Psychological Association\u2019s<\/a> 2022 Conference in Chicago this past April.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following the conference, Cordova continues to work with Wrobel on another important project looking at the psychological effects of the Flint Water Crisis on the city\u2019s residents. To help with this, Cordova is coding and generating tables in Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software. \u201cMy biggest take away from this was interpretation,\u201d he says, \u201cIt\u2019s easy to look at the numbers and jump the gun in their implications when an element is significant. I feel that this awareness is super important when reporting findings in order to give others an accurate impression of the study.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wrobel has been examining the Flint water crisis from its early days, using the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS) to assess mental health residents, as well as how much residents trust the government. Wrobel and Cordova found higher reports of depression, anxiety, and stress, and significantly less trust in government information, among study participants at-risk of exposure to Flint water compared to participants not at-risk. Dr. Wrobel presented their findings in early August at the 2022 American Psychological Association Convention<\/a>, and they continue to analyze the accumulated data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cordova branched out with another UROP research project this summer and joined an interdisciplinary team working on developing a mobile application to help people with Parkinson\u2019s Disease measure their symptoms using their mobile phones. Working with Associate Professor of Psychology Nathaniel Miller, Cordova is helping with data analysis, coding, and formatting of graphs and tables for Healthcare provider usability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne thing that I\u2019m really excited about is working with (Miller) on an upcoming grant to study user design of self-driving vehicles for people with Parkinson\u2019s disease,\u201d said Cordova. \u201cWe\u2019ll be in the car with them, interviewing them, evaluating their responses to it and questioning them on ways it can be improved for them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cordova\u2019s identity as a first-generation college student is meaningful to him. \u201cBoth my mom and my dad\u2019s side of the family are very blue collar, and they had similar perspectives on work and adulthood and growing up, and I always found that very interesting,\u201d he said \u201cI always knew I wanted to go to college and had plans for it, but was kind of deterred from it.\u201d He explained that noticing how  the people in your environment offer different influences, and change your perspective, got him really interested in psychology around junior high school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since then, taking different psychology classes helped shape Cordova\u2019s plan to go into clinical psychology and pursue a career related to forensics. A career possibility he has explored in conversations with an FBI recruiter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Cordova, the biggest impact was his professors\u2019 enthusiasm. \u201cThey\u2019re really open with questions,\u201d he said, \u201cThey don\u2019t get frustrated. If I ask a question, they give me a ton of resources and make sure I\u2019ve got it, and I think that\u2019s the most important thing. They want to shape you into a professional.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cordova also works as a behavioral health specialist while completing his degree. He says the UROP grant money really helps him because the research does take time. \u201cI can take hours away from my actual job, gain experience, and develop my skills while I\u2019m at it,\u201d he says. Cordova\u2019s experience highlights just how much getting involved in research can help students find a more stable path toward the way they want to make a difference in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article previously released, in part, on UM-Flint’s NOW News & Happenings<\/a> on August 1, 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nathaniel Cordova is a full-time undergraduate student at the University of Michigan-Flint slated to graduate with a Bachelor\u2019s in Psychology in December 2022. Shortly after he transferred from Youngstown State University in Ohio, he asked psychology professor Thomas Wrobel what he should do to better prepare for a PhD or Master\u2019s program. Wrobel told him […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":539,"featured_media":102,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[37,36,9,10,12,14,38,18,19,17,39,40,22,29,30,26,41,42],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-student-research-spotlight","tag-american-psychological-association","tag-applied-learning","tag-collaboration","tag-collaborative-research","tag-featured","tag-healthcare-technology","tag-midwestern-psychological-association","tag-office-of-research","tag-office-of-research-and-economic-development","tag-ored","tag-parkinsons-disease","tag-parkinsons-research","tag-research","tag-undergraduate-research","tag-undergraduate-students","tag-urop","tag-vaccine-hesitancy","tag-vaccines"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/539"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions\/104"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/ored\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}