Every fall semester the John Jay community looks forward to seeing first-year students present their semester-long research projects at our annual First-Year Student Showcase. The variety of topics tends to be wide, the methodology for researching the subjects can be intriguing, and the faculty and staff mentorship for our first-year students is always inspiring. Not being able to gather on campus would seem to be a stumbling block for holding the 13th Annual First-Year Student Showcase—as we’d normally peruse hundreds of poster board presentations in the halls of John Jay—but that didn’t stop our students, who were guided by the incomparable Nancy Yang, Associate Director of First Year Programs, who managed our first-ever virtual First-Year Student Showcase.
“While the showcase looks different from years past, this showcase is probably going to be the one that I never forget,” said Yang during the virtual event. “It’s the one where first-year students started their college experience in the middle of a pandemic and found ways to collaborate with each other without ever being physically together. It’s the one where faculty showed their love and support through a screen.” After watching the first-year student presenters mention what they researched over the semester, many viewers wanted a more in-depth look at their projects. That’s where this article series comes in. We connected with some of the presenters and dived a little deeper into their theories, their methodologies, and their findings.
Anglique Beharry ’24 and Her Team Research the Career Paths of Officers Accused of Misconduct
With the help of Assistant Professor Gregory “Fritz” Umbach, Ph.D., Lecturer Elton Beckett, Assistant Professor Valerie West, Ph.D., and Peer Success Coach Tatyana Robinson, Anglique Beharry ’24, an International Criminal Justice major who grew up in South Ozone Park, New York, delved into the career paths of New York Police Department (NYPD) officers accused of misconduct.
Remembering what she learned in Nancy Yang’s class about how flawed memories can be, Anisa Rose Montalvo ’24, a Computer Science and Information Security major, from Westchester County, New York, and her team decided that their research project “Scared,” would use a choose your own adventure game to show how trauma can alter memories in children.
Kevin Cabrera ’24, a Forensic Psychology major from Queens, New York, along with his team and under the guidance of Associate Professor Helen Kapstein, Ph.D, and SASP Peer Success Coach Fiona Kim, examined and compared how the concept of distributive justice was used in the novel Great Expectations and a modern-day adaptation of the Dickens classic.
