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Parental relationships play a critical role in shaping youth development that extend into adulthood. Although substantial research has examined differences in mother/father–child relationship quality (Shearer et al., 2005), less is known for young adult males. This gap highlights the need to examine parental influences during this transitional period. Additionally, cultural context may shape how young men understand/experience their relationships with parents, making it important to examine these dynamics within diverse ethnic groups (Zhang & Grant, 2023). Therefore, the study explores within-group differences among White, Black, and Hispanic young adult males. It is hypothesized that 1) mother– and father–child relationship quality will differ within each ethnic group, and 2) higher parental relationship quality will be associated with adult developmental outcomes within each group. A sample of 76 young adult males completed a survey assessing parental relationship quality, academic motivation, and depression. Within-group analyses (Black, White, and Hispanic participants) showed mother–son relationship quality was rated higher than father–son relationship quality (e.g., Black participants: Mothers M = 4.33, SD = 0.84; Fathers M = 3.25, SD = 1.25), t(27) = 4.35, p < .001, d = 1.35, large effect. Preliminary correlations indicated that higher mother–son relationship quality predicted lower depression, but only among Black participants (r = –.51, p = .006, N = 28). For White participants, both mother–son (r = .37, p = .033, N = 33) and father–son (r = .35, p = .045, N = 33) relationship quality were positively associated with academic motivation. 

California's Perinatal Hub is an online space for families to receive care, connections, and healing.The organization provides a team of doulas, coaches, educators, and wellness advocates specialized in perinatal mental health. Through this program, I was able to get more experience on the importance of mental health advocacy for moms/families from a public health perspective. My main focus was to serve the organization by developing health marketing campaigns to promote services for mothers who may need health education and support. My main goal for this internship was to learn how to develop effective health promotion campaigns to serve to parents/families with NICU babies.

    In my public health internship, I had the opportunity to be at the Westminster Free Clinic located in Thousand Oaks. The clinic provides essential services to the community such as medical care and access to a food pantry, promoting healthy eating habits. One of the key programs that is offered is Corazones Sanos. This program supports and  focuses on individuals who may have limited access and knowledge to nutritional education as well as helping manage conditions like heart disease, diabetes and  high blood pressure. 
    During my internship, I assisted with data collection for the programs Corazones Sanos or Healthy hearts, by tracking pre and post evaluations of patients and assisting distribute the nutritionally valuable food for  families. The data collection is then used to better understand any of the community needs while also identifying trends in patient health and the effectiveness of the program. 

Following the closure of the California Youth Authority in 2023 under Senate Bill 823, the juvenile justice system aimed to shift their core focus toward more local rehabilitation efforts, revealing alternatives to standard forms of imprisonment. In the efforts to aid in this fundamental transition for incarcerated youth, there is a critical need to acknowledge and fill the gaps in education, life skills, and prosocial development that, if unaddressed, can fuel cycles of criminality that can persist into adulthood. This research project serves as an extension of the CLU Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program by bringing Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ professors back into a Juvenile Facility in Oxnard to deliver short-term, evidence-based academic workshops specifically aimed at developing prosocial skills among high school-aged youth ages 14-17. Using a pre- and post-survey design, we examine whether participating in structured educational workshops increases prosocial skills in areas such as literacy, cooperation and collaborations, cultural competency, critical thinking, public speaking, and job readiness. The preliminary findings aim to inform future juvenile justice programming and contribute to short and long-term individual impacts and community safety.

During the Spring 2026 Semester, I worked as an intern for California's Perinatal Hub, a non-profit organization. As an intern, I had the opportunity to create training materials for healthcare professionals, developing educational resources that promote the organization’s mission to foster more inclusive and accessible perinatal care for families. I specifically worked on a webinar titled Words Matter, with the goals of improving professional understanding of the word “perinatal” in clinical and healthcare settings, exploring how language shapes care, access, and inclusion, and promoting inclusive communication across perinatal health systems. I created presentation slides and one-sheet marketing to facilitate the webinar, and also worked on promotional brochures for the organization. Overall, through this internship, I have become more skilled in designing training materials for public health audiences, improved my marketing and outreach competency, and learned how to collaborate with public health professionals on real-world program development. 

Emotional intelligence (EI) is a skill that enables people to identify, understand, and regulate their emotions, which can develop throughout one’s life. Previous research indicates that people can develop and exhibit EI at different times in life, but also shows that people still form internal beliefs about how EI develops. However, few studies indicate whether people form a direct, implicit connection between EI capacity and age. This study explored the implicit and explicit beliefs people form about human EI capacity at different ages in two quasi-experimental studies. Each experiment had the same design, procedure, and materials. The first version of this study found no significant main findings, but its results were slightly limited by a small sample size and the study was conducted in an uncontrolled setting. While implementing the same methodology, this study addresses the sample size limitation of the first study by using a new, larger sample of data collected in a laboratory setting, conducted in person. The first version of this study was conducted online using Prolific (n=112), and the second was conducted in a laboratory setting at CLU (n=172).  In the experiments, participants first completed an adaptation of the Implicit Association Task (IAT) to measure the implicit associations they formed about EI capacity in two different age categories: “young” and “old.” Then, participants completed two scales that measured their explicit beliefs about EI capacity in adults and children, and their implicit theories about EI development. 

In California’s warm, dry climate, where fire is native to the landscape, it is unrealistic to try to prevent it. Prescribed burning is one of the most effective ways to build fire resilience because it mimics the natural fire regime in a controlled, manageable way. For thousands of years, Indigenous people in California set purposeful fires that served to both clear fuel from the land and to enhance the growth of culturally significant endemic plant species. However, the United States government stopped Indigenous people from using the land in their traditional ways, including carrying out cultural burns, and eventually removed them from the land entirely. Fire suppression became the dominant land management paradigm, and it is one of the major causes of California’s current wildfire problem. The purpose of this study is to evaluate how public land management agencies have or have not taken advantage of prescribed/cultural burning as a fire resilience strategy, and to assess Indigenous representation and power in prescribed fire operations. To do so, this study uses qualitative data collected from interviews with content experts and relevant site visits. Restoring beneficial fire to California’s landscapes is important for fire resilience, but given its cultural importance, it is essential to create opportunities for Indigenous people to be involved and to lead. Ultimately, the objective is to maximize both fire resilience and equity by incorporating principles of Indigenous environmental justice into land management practices.

Fredrickson and Roberts (1997) defined objectification as the reduction of a woman’s  body to an instrument for men in their own gratification. For athletes, specifically, the pressure to perform at high levels on and off the field can be exacerbated by media portrayals of female athletes and critical comments of their bodies by coaches, teammates, and fans. The purpose of the current project was to analyze the effects of internalization of sociocultural attitudes, how it impacts experiences with body surveillance, as well as the way that these feelings manifest in self-presentation behaviors before and during competition. This mixed-methods study examined experiences of NCAA women athletes (n = 120) regarding their appearance choices for competitions (e.g., hair, makeup, uniforms choices, etc.). Internalized sociocultural attitudes of appearance were found to be directly related to increased rates of objectifying body consciousness r (118) = .501, p < .001. This is thought to be due to an incongruence of expectations held by external sources, unrealistic norms set by media, and the internalized ideals of the athlete. Overall, collegiate female athletes are at an elevated risk of internalizing societal attitudes as a result from critical comments that lead to body surveillance. This is important because body surveillance has the potential to lead to negative outcomes, such as disrupted flow states and decreased performance. These findings can contribute to the development of resources as protective measures for female athletes from experiencing incongruence in their appearance ideals and presentation for competitions.

In June 2022, the United States Supreme Court issued its ruling in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, where it concluded that there is no constitutional protection of abortion. This landmark decision reversed nearly fifty years of precedent established by the cases of Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), which previously affirmed abortion as a constitutionally protected right. As a result of the Dobbs decision, the authority to regulate abortion returned to the states, leading to significant policy variation across the United States. Furthermore, abortion policies have significant implications for social and economic participation, particularly for young women and minorities. Given the wide-reaching impact of abortion policies, this study examines how Dobbs influenced political mobilization and engagement by comparing public opinion in 2022 and 2024 across demographics. The findings suggest abortion has become an important issue for many voters following the decision, with a majority expressing support for legal access to abortion in both years. These attitudes were consistent across gender, age, and racial groups, though variation existed in intensity of support and perceived importance. In 2024, this public sentiment contributed to the passage of seven state-level ballot measures that expanded protections for abortion in various states.

Through my public health internship at Conejo Free Clinic, I had the opportunity to support underserved communities by improving access toessential oral healthcare services. Conejo Free Clinic is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing free medical and dental care to uninsured and low-income individuals, helping reduce barriers to healthcare access. During my internship, I worked closely with dental professionals to assist with chairside procedures, maintain infectioncontrol protocols, and ensure efficient clinic operations. I also engaged in patient education, emphasizing the importance of oral hygiene practicesand routine dental care to promote long-term oral health.

In recent times, the increase of maternal-childbearing complications in the United States has remained prevalent, and the resulting impacts on sexuality are still relatively unexplored in the U.S. Faculty Co-PIs designed and collected data over several years via in-depth interviews with 41 participants who self-identified as women who had given birth and experienced maternal morbidities. Student Research Assistants contributed to the qualitative analysis, helping to refine codes and look for patterns in the 27 participants who had described struggles encountered in their postpartum sexuality journey.These interviews help us understand the lack of healthcare and the lack of educating new parents about their changes in sex life, and how that lack of care harms the new parents' sex life postpartum. Their patient narratives note that physiological pain and social-psychological distress are too often not addressed due to inadequate healthcare and a lack of postpartum-specific sex education given to partners postpartum. Because of these deficits, these issues affect both partners navigating sexuality postpartum. The results emphasize that postpartum sexuality is a shared experience that requires mutual understanding and attention from both partners in a committed relationship. We found that the disconnection between medical providers and patients further exacerbates the lack of sexuality knowledge postpartum. Even those who have access to medical resources report unhelpful medical providers who make them feel dismissed and/or neglected. These findings underscore the need for improved medical guidance and comprehensive education given to these individuals navigating postpartum sexual health and their journey.

Cognitive offloading has become increasingly relevant as students rely on external tools to support learning. This study examined whether access to lecture slides influences students’ comprehension and perceived learning during a short lecture. We hypothesized that the group with access to the slides would score higher on comprehension and learning effectiveness due to research suggesting external aids assist with understanding and retention. Participants included 40 undergraduate students between 18 and 31 years old recruited from a university participant pool. Each participant listened to the same seven-minute lecture and was randomly assigned to either view accompanying lecture slides or hear an audio-only version. After the lecture, students completed a 10-item comprehension quiz followed by an eight-item survey evaluating their perceived learning effectiveness. Independent-samples t-tests were used to analyze the data. Results showed no significant difference in comprehension scores between the slide and no-slide conditions. However, students who had access to slides rated their learning effectiveness significantly higher than those in the audio-only condition. The key finding is that lecture slides increased perceived understanding without improving actual recall or comprehension. These results suggest that visual aids like slides may improve a students’ confidence in their understanding of the material with no actual influence on learning performance.

Angel City Football Club is one of the world’s most valuable women’s sports teams, but its new training facility near Ä¢¹½´«Ã½’s campus has yet to form meaningful ties with the community it calls home. This campaign invites girl dads living in Thousand Oaks to reconsider their relationships with women’s sports and discover their place in ACFC’s mission to “build the fiercest, most inclusive community in world football.”
Research from S&P Global Market Intelligence states that 61% of men were fans of FIFA women’s soccer in 2024, compared to only 39% of women, with the majority around 35 years old. Allison and Kossakowski’s 2024 study also suggests that men are more likely to engage with women’s sports through close relationships with their daughters.
The “Rooting for Her” campaign focuses on family and community connection to build fandom through three tactics targeting millennial girl dads in Thousand Oaks: A Father’s Day event at ACFC’s training facility, game day watch parties at local venues like Cronies Sports Grill and a beer collaboration with Tarantula Hill Brewing Co.
Our message will be amplified through hashtags #RootingForHer and #TOxAngelCity via Facebook, Instagram and X channels. Success will be measured through KPIs including earned media coverage, tracking social media engagement on game days, and attendance at the inaugural Father’s Day event at ACFC’s training facility.
Watch our Gold ADDY-winning consumer campaign here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PVL_XXRM9rEa5HKawn8FN9WYTPjerstb/view?usp=sharing

The Boys & Girls Club Of Greater Conejo Valley is an organization where you could gain hands on experience in the education industry. The BGC is an after school program where students ranging from Tk-8th grade can join. There are three middle schools in Thousand Oaks that have a Boys & Girls Club, I work at Notter which is Redwood Middle School. I've always had a passion for working with kids so as I started this internship I had the intentions of gaining hands on experience with kids. This internship conncets with public health as I try focusing on their mental health and becoming one of their supporters.

A presentation on the process of directing. The topic covers choosing a play, cutting a script, collaborating with your designers, casting, and working with your actors. Covers preproduction through performances.  Features pictures and design work from the student-directed show, "A Midsummer Night's Dream", spring 2026. Includes the original pitch for the production alongside the final director's note. 

The modern day sports media has treated the athletes they cover differently based on whether or not they are white or black. This disparate treatment based on race is done through their analyses of athletes before, during, and after games, as well as in the off-season. This study uses framing theory to examine the way in which the NFL pre-draft analyses of players frame white versus black athletes. The draft classifies players yearly by writing a pre-draft analysis of all potential first round picks in order to determine the skill set of each player. This study is a content analysis of the NFL pre-draft analyses for first round draftees since 2017. The analyses were coded in terms of whether the players’ physical attributes, mental attributes or leadership qualities were noted as the lead player characteristics in the NFL’s Pre-draft descriptions.  The results showed an attribute disparity between the races of athletes. Black players were disproportionately described in terms of their physical attributes, whereas white players were described in terms of their mental attributes and leadership abilities.

The Supreme Court's landmark decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) overturned nearly fifty years of precedent established by Roe v. Wade, eliminating the federal constitutional right to abortion and returning the issue of abortion regulation to individual states. This literature review project analyzes the political consequences of the Dobbs ruling, arguing that Dobbs has not only intensified partisan polarization but has also triggered a broader struggle over democratic participation and civil rights in the United States. The findings of this study are synthesized from leading legal, public opinion, and policy sources, and demonstrate how abortion attitudes now function as a primary marker of partisan identity, with striking demographic divides along racial, geographic, and ideological lines. This review reveals a strategic alignment between reproductive restrictions and voter suppression, showing that states enacting abortion bans are often the same states implementing restrictive voting laws. This disproportionately disenfranchises and harms women of color who are more likely to live in states with bans on reproductive freedoms and face barriers to political participation. Furthermore, an analysis of the 2024 election cycle reveals an electoral landscape showing strong public support for abortion access has driven significant mobilization, yet its impact at the ballot box is often hindered by competing concerns such as that of the country's economy. The post-Roe era is thus defined by the intersection of reproductive rights, voter access, and racial equity, posing an array of questions for the future of what American democracy will look like.

This qualitative study looks at a sample of the online public discourse following the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Digital ethnographic methodology is used to examine the data, with Reddit serving as the primary data source. This case study examines data to explore partisan views of the justice system in Reddit discussions, focusing on micro-level experiences (local policing and anecdotes) and macro-level issues (corporate influence and government regulation). Results show that liberals and conservatives converge at the micro level but diverge on the macro level. Tangible, personalized issues foster cross-party agreement, while abstract policy debates heighten polarization.

COPE is a program for those interested in the healthcare field. Through the COPE health Scholars program at Adventist Health Glendale (AHGL) I gained valuable, hands-on experience in three different departments, the Couplet Care, Emergency Department, and Labor and Delivery. I also served as a Recruitment Coordinator and through which I would reach out to prospective Health Scholars and to professors about the program. My goal for this internship was to explore different career options in the medical field and accumulate volunteer hours. I chose to rotate in Couplet Care (CC) and in the Emergency Department (ED) where, as a Health Scholar, you work side by side with different kinds of healthcare providers.

The American Catholic Church is facing a crisis in declining membership, a shortage of priests, and fallout from the sexual abuse scandal. Yet Latino Catholics remain a vital and growing presence, sustaining many of the nation’s most vibrant parishes. Despite this, Church leaders have often neglected or marginalized Latino communities, creating tensions that now threaten long-term engagement.
This project, Reluctant Evolution: Latino Communities and the American Catholic Church, asks why this neglect persists and how it shapes the Church’s future. Through content analysis of Church documents and interviews with bishops, priests, and Hispanic ministers, the research examines both institutional responses and Latino experiences. The findings reveal how history, culture, and organizational structures complicate Latino integration, offering critical insight into religion, politics, and demographic change in the United States.

This study examines patterns of artificial intelligence (AI) usage among undergraduate students at Ä¢¹½´«Ã½, focusing on academic year and major type (STEM vs. non-STEM). The research aimed to answer the question: How do college students use artificial intelligence, what are their opinions on it, and what demographic factors influence AI usage? A quantitative survey of 115 students was conducted to identify relationships between AI usage, academic year, and STEM affiliation. Findings show that upperclassmen use AI more frequently than lower classmen, contradicting the group hypothesis. Results also indicate that non-STEM majors use AI at higher rates than STEM majors, with statistical tests showing no significant association between major type and AI usage. These findings highlight differences in how students engage with AI tools based on academic demands and point to the need for further research on how AI is integrated into higher education.
 

Costume design plays a key role in character storytelling, world building, and shaping how audiences experience a production, especially in a play as whimsical and imaginative as A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare. By taking inspiration from the boundless creativity of childhood, I explored how familiar, everyday materials can evoke wonder and contribute to the story. 
The purpose of this project was to reimagine the costume design of A Midsummer Night’s Dream through the lens of childhood play, emphasizing imagination, creativity, big dreams, and fantasy. 
I designed and crafted each costume using many materials I used to play with as a child including soda can tabs, sticks, yarn, and glitter.I aimed to mirror how children create meaning and fantasy from their everyday surroundings. I was able to experiment with many unique textures and materials to create costumes that embodied the magic of the play and the fun of youthful creativity.

Psychotherapies are considered effective at treating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) for acute interventions. Cognitive Therapies are some of the most commonly used forms of therapy for PTSD (Rosenburg et al., 2008; Shalev et al., 1996). Exposure Therapy, a subset of Cognitive Therapies, yields mixed results on its efficacy for treating PTSD (Shalev et al., 1996). Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) was developed for treating individuals with trauma without common cognitive therapy practices like exposure, describing experiences, challenging beliefs, or homework (Hurley, 2018). The methodology was derived from a study by Kline, et al. (2018). Effect sizes were calculated as Cohen’s d and converted into Hedge’s g to minimise bias. Moderators included were treatment, measure type, and population type. All statistical analyses were conducted using R version 4.4.1. This meta-analysis evaluated the post-treatment effects of psychotherapies in randomized controlled trials. The overall effectiveness of Psychotherapy, with 121 treatment conditions in 58 PTSD, was g=-1.23 (<.05). Effect sizes were significantly larger for all four psychotherapy subgroups relative to the control conditions post-treatment. EMDR had the largest effect size (-1.58) while Nondirective therapies had the smallest ( -0.766). The moderators of population type and measure type had no significant difference. Findings provide that acute efficacy of interventions produce significant decrease in PTSD symptoms relative to control groups. It also shows which treatments subgroups are more effective than others. Current limitations include that the subgroups are broad, including numerous variations of therapy, therapy with adjunctive treatments, or psychotherapy in conjunction with medication.

A Midsummer Night’s Dreamis one of William Shakespeare’s most popular and earliest comedic plays, written between 1594 and 1596. The play has many allusions to the works of  the Roman poets Virgil and Ovid, first-century Greek historian Plutarch, and medieval English poet Chaucer, all of which William Shakespeare would have studied in Stratford-Upon-Avon during grammar school, similarly to his contemporaries. The most significant of these inspirations is Ovid’s Metamorphoses, centered around Greek myth as well as the tragic story of the lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe. 
As the dramaturg for Ä¢¹½´«Ã½’s Theatre Department show of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I sought to discover the rich history behind the play’s creation. I researched political context, prominent themes and symbols, literary analysis, and how plays would have been performed in 16-17th century London. 
I discovered that despite A Midsummer Night’s Dream being considered a good “beginner” play, lighthearted for middle schools (the time when I first read it), it has incredibly dark themes of coersion, rape, the slippery slope of hatred, and masochist perceptions of love. Desperation and magical influence bring many characters to do what they never would have imagined. Concerned with the intensity, the director and I started out with a more toned-down script but several actors were excited for the opportunity to portray what is seen in culture as taboo, restrictive, and supressed. Midsummer is also special in the way that Shakespeare played with the language in ways of malapropisms, innuendo, parallel speech, and subverting iambic pentameter. 

Earlier estimates indicated that 19 million women in the U.S. received an annual preventive gynecological exam (Mehorta et al., 2007), but more recent data suggest a decline in these visits. In 2022–2023, 73% of women reported having a medical visit within the past year, reflecting shifts in healthcare patterns (WWVR, 2025). This reduction may limit opportunities for patient–provider communication about sexual health. Importantly, a persistent communication gap between patients and doctors remains (Uzdavines et al., 2022). Addressing this gap is critical, as effective communication during medical visits can increase self-efficacy and improve health. This study examined how prior health screenings/doctor consultations relate to adults’ self-efficacy in discussing sexual health. It was hypothesized that (1) prior screenings would be associated with higher self-efficacy, (2) consulting a doctor would be linked to differences in self-efficacy, and (3) there would be an interaction between screenings/consultations. A sample of 269 young adults completed an anonymous online survey assessing their history of screenings and consultations, as well as their comfort and confidence discussing sexual health topics. A two-way between-subjects ANOVA focusing on confidence in discussing contraception revealed a main effect of prior screening, F(1, 257) = 9.51, p = .002, η² = .036, with screened participants reporting higher confidence than those without screening history. There was also a main effect of prior consultation, F(1, 257) = 4.37, p = .037, η² = .017. Although the interaction was not significant, the pattern suggested the highest confidence among participants with both prior screening and consultation experience.

This project highlights my internship as a COPE Health Scholar at Kaiser Permanente, where I gained hands-on experience in a clinical healthcare setting. The purpose of this internship was to build essential clinical skills, improve patient interaction, and better understand the responsibilities of healthcare professionals. Throughout the experience, I supported patient care and observed the daily workflow of nurses, physicians, and other members of the healthcare team. This opportunity strengthened my communication, professionalism, adaptability, and confidence in a fast-paced medical environment. Overall, this experience reinforced my goal of becoming a Physician Assistant and provided meaningful insight into my future career in healthcare.

This study examines counselor perspectives on Camp HOPE, a week-long program for youth exposed to domestic violence. Through surveys of 14 counselors, we investigated perceptions of program effectiveness and how counselors' own Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) influence their work. Results show strong consensus on the program's effectiveness. Notably, counselors who believed they facilitated hope, healing, and resilience "extremely well" all had multiple ACEs, suggesting shared experiences enhance effectiveness. Counselors regardless of ACE background reported personal healing through their service, indicating reciprocal therapeutic benefits.
 
Through our research we hope to contribute to the literatures on  trauma-informed programming for youth, to improve the effectiveness of Camp HOPE and to inform decisions about future program development for the Ventura County Family Justice Center.