Sarah Gillespie, an ICD doctoral student, has been awarded the American Psychological Foundation Visionary Grant to fund Project UNITE: UNderstanding Identity Through Education. The Visionary Grant seeks to further innovation through supporting research, education and intervention projects and programs that use psychology to solve social problems. Preference for projects and programs are given to those that would be strong candidates for support from major federal and foundation funding agencies, and “demonstration projects” that promise to generalize broadly to similar settings in other geographical areas and/or to other settings.

Gillespie’s Project UNITE: UNderstanding Identity through Education was designed to evaluate the impact of an ethnic studies course on high school students. In Fall of 2021 Minneapolis became one of the first public school districts in the country to require an ethnic studies course to graduate from high school. Gillespie’s research aims to identify the impact of the course on students’ identity development, academic achievement and well-being. Additionally, the project explores whether or not students build bridges between the classroom and the community through civic engagement and having conversations with family or friends. 

Congratulations, Sarah!