La Salle’s School of Arts and Sciences Summer Research Program Pairs Faculty and Students for Meaningful Collaboration

Three pairs of La Salle University faculty and students have been working on joint research projects for the summer, under the School of Arts and Sciences Summer Research Program

Kelley Dougherty, a communication major, is working with communication professors Elaine Zelley and Marianne Dainton on a second edition their book, Applying Communication Theory for Professional Life: A Practical Introduction.

Jennifer Morrison, a psychology student, is spending her summer assisting psychology  Professor Kelly McClure analyze what happens to families when a child needs mental health treatment.

Megan Henderson, a senior English major with a minor in German, spent three weeks in Austria in July assisting Professor Vincent Kling with a research project about a writer who used documents from the Holocaust to create a book titled transcript.

Dougherty’s project began when “The publishers (of Applying Communication Theory for Professional Life: A Practical Introduction) asked for an updated version, including a more robust instructor's manual, and I immediately thought of Kelley because I knew she is considering studying towards a Ph.D. in interpersonal communication,” said Zelley. “This book is a theory textbook written for a ‘professionally oriented’ audience, and is quite unique on the market as a result. Kelley will have great exposure, not only learning new theories as she undergoes the writing process, but also will graduate from La Salle with a by-lined publication!”

The book’s case studies need to be rewritten to include more recent examples, said Dougherty. “Also, new theories have been created that we are including in the updated version of the textbook.   Basically every chapter is being looked at and updated to better suit current students,” she added.

Dougherty is also considering law school after graduating from La Salle. Last summer, she interned with Superior Court Judge John Panella in Bethlehem, Pa. In addition to working with her professors, Dougherty is interning with the public relations firm Vault Communications in Plymouth Meeting, Pa.

As for Jennifer Morrison, she said, “My role in this project (assisting Professor McClure) has been cleaning up the database, pulling files, correcting information, and contributing to the discussion of this research, essentially that of a research assistant. I have also done quite a bit of learning under Dr. McClure that will no doubt benefit me in the years to come.”

McClure’s and Morrison’s research seeks to determine what happens to a parent's or caregiver's quality of life when a child needs help from a mental health professional?  “I became interested in this topic while providing psychological services for children and studying the effectiveness of the treatments,” said McClure. “I began to wonder if we could measure effectiveness not only in the children, but in their family members as well.”

Morrison is helping to analyze questionnaires that parents completed after their children received therapy or psychological testing for anxiety, depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and behavior problems. Approximately 90 caregivers, mostly mothers, participated in the study.

In 2007, Megan Henderson went to Austria during a study-travel program and became interested in the work of Austrian author and publisher Heimrad Bäcker, whose projects deal with the Holocaust. He worked in several media – poems, plays, photographs – into a piece he called Epitaph. transcript is one part of that project.

“It was so unique, I had never read anything like it,” said Henderson, and she decided to do her honors thesis on Backer and transcript.

Last month, Henderson and Professor Kling studied materials relating to Epitaph at the Austrian Literature Library in Vienna, including all 42 volumes of the Nuremberg Trials. In addition to researching the source material, Henderson interviewed Backer. The result was a 33-page honors thesis, and the Literature Library has asked for a copy of it, said Kling.

Backer’s Holocaust work is portrayed in several media—poems, plays, photographs.  He studied thousands of primary documents, said Kling, “and he shaped these primary documents into transcript, arranging these documents—of course abridged—on each page of the book in such a way that even though it’s not ‘original’ it’s a poem nonetheless in the impact of the way the words are arranged against the white space,” said Kling, who has co-authored a translation of it into English.

As for Henderson’s thesis, Kling said, “I can tell you that it is a significant achievement, and gives promise of much more.  One point is worth noting:  Megan is the first scholar—and I’ve been through the literature on Backer—who has made the simple but brilliant discovery that transcript tells a chronological history of the Holocaust in Austria, from the first prohibitions in 1938 through the atrocious revelations of the War Crimes Trials in 1947 and 1948.” 

When not researching transcript, Henderson spent time exploring Vienna and its neighborhoods and went to the opera. She plans to attend graduate school for English. Henderson has also been an active member of La Salle’s student theatre group, the Masque, primarily with its technical crew. Last semester, she designed an elaborate set for a production of Arsenic and Old Lace. She is also a writing tutor.