Santiba Campbell, a doctoral candidate and instructor in psychology at UD, recently was selected by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) as a Best Poster Award winner for 2008 from a pool of nearly 200 candidates.
Campbell, who will graduate from UD next May, presented her poster at the biannual SPSSI conference, held at Roosevelt University in Chicago last month, where her work on racial sensitivity was viewed by hundreds of leading scholars and psychologists in the field of social psychology.
“My research is on racial identity and attitude,” said Campbell, who earned her bachelor's degree in psychology from Winston-Salem State University before coming to UD in 2003 to pursue her research and doctoral degree under the guidance of James Jones, director of the Black American Studies Program at UD.
“I study black people and how they feel about various issues, because that's something that isn't always researched in social psychology literature,” Campbell said. “More often, what's written about is how the white population relates to the black population, so what I decided to do was to focus solely on the black population and ask how they felt being discriminated against and how they felt living in a racist society, and what were some of the factors that kept them persistent and productive.”
The poster for which Campbell won the award compared the racial identities of black students at historically black colleges with the racial identities of black students at predominantly white institutions, taking into account, among other factors, how this played out in retention rates. Campbell said her research probably stood out because it broke new ground and addressed an often glossed-over issue.
“I think often we look at research among black students as representing a whole--that all black students are thinking one way--and that's not necessarily the case,” Campbell said. “The different environments can prompt different attitudes from students, and what I found to be a major player in this situation is racial identity. How one feels about oneself and how one feels about the group is going to affect how sensitive one is to one's environment.”
Besides being recognized by the prestigious scholarly organization with an honor that shines the spotlight on her work, Campbell also was given a two-year membership to SPSSI, along with two years of free subscriptions to three leading journals in social psychology. Additionally, the conference, which drew many of the nation's most respected social psychologists, afforded her the opportunity to network and talk informally with experts.
“Membership in SPSSI isn't cheap,” Campbell said, “so as a graduate student, two full years of dues is great. Plus, how often do you actually get to meet with the people whose work you've read and admired? At the conference, I was able to chat with numerous famous psychologists, which was really exciting.”
Article by Becca Hutchinson
Photo by Kathy Atkinson