Student Spotlight: Haylee Downey
Each year the Office of Research chooses a few of our many exemplary Undergraduate Research Fellows to be Spotlight Students. We interview these students to learn more about their experiences as researchers and as undergraduate students at USU.
Haylee Downey is a Psychology student in the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services. Haylee supplements her studies with a minor in Statistics, which helped her apply for and receive an Undergraduate Research & Creative Opportunities grant.
About You
Q: What is your name and where are you from?
A: Haylee Downey, from Denver, CO
Q: What are your interests outside of school and your research?
A: Rock climbing, spending time in the desert
Q: What is one fun fact about you?
A: I climb mountains for fun.
Your Studies and Research
Q: What are you studying?
A: Psychology and minoring in statistics.
Q: What is the focus of your research?
A: Impulsive decision making – delay discounting – and its association with maladaptive behavioral issues like substance abuse, obesity, poor preventative health behaviors, problematic gambling.
Q: What is your favorite part of your research?
A: Not only am I searching for the answer of how and why people decide to do the things they do, it is also potentially possible to help people make better decisions about their behavior that can benefit them in the future.
Q: When did you know what you wanted to study?
A: I read some books on behavioral economics before I started school, realized the possible implications of studying this, and was introduced to learning as a “technology of behavior”
Q: What led you to Utah State?
A: Scholarships, in-state tuition, and the mountains
A Typical Day
Q: Describe a typical day in the lab/field.
A: There’s a wide body of literature to study, using R to analyze data, running animals and caring for animals in the lab, writing grants and paper work for the IRB/IACUC, and running human participants
Q: What skills or expertise do you have/are you growing through your research?
A: R statistical software and statistical methods in general, ethics related to animal and human research, critical and analytical thinking about a large and complex body of information, animal care and handling, how to run human and animal participants, manuscript preparation and how to write, how to learn quickly
Q: What is your favorite thing about Logan/Utah State?
A: Outdoors!
Q: What has been a valuable USU resource for you and your research?
A: The USU Honors program and UTF program.
Mentor
Q: Who is your mentor?
A: Dr. Amy Odum
Q: How did they become your mentor?
A: I went to her office hours and talked about my research interests (she is a pioneer in delay discounting, which I said I was interested in). She invited me to her graduate lab meetings and then my involvement increased a lot from there!
Q: What do you like about the collaboration process?
A: Sharing ideas and viewpoints, contributing skills to projects, improving ideas and output with feedback and constructive criticism,
Q: What is one valuable thing that research has taught you?
A: No one really knows what they’re doing, but everyone is trying really hard. Everything is an empirical question
and even people who know a lot can still be wrong.
Do you have any advice for new research students here at Utah State?
Find something that you are passionate about, stay challenged in your work, and demonstrate to professors that you’re competent. Read their work before you approach them.