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Holly Feret ’05 (Parlin, N.J.) spent 10 weeks in Binghamton, N.Y., this summer conducting research in her neuroscience major through the Lafayette Alumni Research Network.
Feret worked with Peter Donovick ’61, professor of psychology at University of New York-Binghamton, who studies the cognitive and behavioral factors associated with traumatic brain injury, chronic disease, and mental illness.
While Feret was involved with several studies, including one on facial recognition, her main project involved using archival data collected from prisoners and hospital patients to analyze the relationships among age, education, and I.Q. on tests of cognitive and motor processing speed.
“My research gave me insight into the multitude of cognitive tests that are used and how many of them are used to diagnose different brain injuries,” she says.
Feret says that working with Donovick has led her to consider pursuing a career in neuropsychology, a field previously unknown to her.
“[Donovick] was extremely knowledgeable and often would offer interesting perspectives on things, encouraging me to think about them from a different angle and to look below the surface,” she says.
Feret was one of five Lafayette students paid for eight to ten weeks of fulltime work through the Lafayette Alumni Research Network. Travel to their mentor’s institution and room expenses also were covered through the program, which was established in 2002 in part through a grant from the McCutcheon Foundation.
Prior to her summer research, Feret spent the spring semester in Madrid, Spain, where she lived with a family and took art, history, language, and literature courses in Spanish. She also participated in an interim abroad course, “Exploring South America,” in winter 2003, visiting several cities in Peru and Brazil.
A graduate of Sayerville War Memorial High School, she is a cheerleader, vice president for the Lafayette Society of Neuroscience, a member of the Alpha Phi sorority, and a teaching assistant for general biology.