Often times, the help you seek comes from a place you would never think to look. For SMPA Senior Jessica McEntee, the help she needed to complete her senior thesis appeared in the form of the GW SURE Award.
McEntee, a University honors student who is double majoring in Political Communication and Economics, is primarily focused on the power and influence of logos, specifically during political campaigns. Her thesis includes a survey that measures the ability of logos to produce strong emotional reactions and mobilize voters. Ensuring enough people took the survey was a challenge.
"To receive senior honors, you have to conduct a study to its full extent,” said McEntee. “I didn’t know if I would reach enough people to survey them, just based on me being a student at GW.”
McEntee worried that the population for her survey research would be skewed if she only relied on student participants, and the results would not be generalizable. Initially, McEntee was prepared to use her own personal funds to widen the scope of her study, but the SURE Award was able to erase the cost. After hearing about the award in Professor Gross' senior seminar course, McEntee applied and received a $500 grant to help execute the methodological part of her research project. With the grant, she will employ Amazon’s Mechanical Turk--a platform offered by the e-commerce and online market giant--to recruit respondents for experiments and tests.
“Because of the grant, I will put up my website, post the survey and give respondents 50 cents,” said McEntee. “I will be able to reach 200-300 people from a variety of demographics, instead of only 100 people on campus.”
Carrying out the entire study will take the entire academic year. The larger group of respondents will increase the accuracy of McEntee’s results, which will help when she defends her research in front of a panel made up of Professor Gross and Professor Beckman of SMPA, and Professor Johan Severtson of the Corcoran School. McEntee’s research is multifaceted and spans across several disciplines; each professor on the committee will offer their expertise, help her design the study, and guide her at every stage.
“[The professors] are there to check in with me throughout the year because they are eventually doing to sit down and discuss whether or not my thesis makes sense and is coherent,” said McEntee.
McEntee’s hopes her research will add a new dimension to the body of scholarly political and strategic communication work.
“There’s not really a political communication aspect out there about logos’ effect on voters,” said McEntee. “I’m trying to create one more cross-disciplinary look that examines the art aspect but also ties in marketing.”
McEntee said she glad that the award pushed her to aim higher rather than settling for a method where she would not interact with people or come to more interesting conclusions. The GW Sure Award gave her the ability to delve into the project.
“I think a grant like this lets you push that boundary a little bit, to take bigger risks,” said McEntee.
She said she would definitely encourage more students who conduct original research to apply for grants and awards like GW SURE.
“I think people claim that there is nothing out there to help you,” said McEntee. “Talk to your professors, you’ll find out about awards like this.”
The SURE Award, made possible by GW Professors Carol and Lee Sigelman, supports and funds scholarly, scientific and artistic endeavors of students across all majors.