Emory College student Courtney Fitzgerald had planned on a nursing career until a first-year sociology class sparked her curiosity in understanding social interactions.
She spent the next two years asking questions, first as a student researcher examining organizational behavior at Goizueta Business School. Then, she developed an original research proposal investigating the interconnected nature of marginalized identities that won her a coveted slot in Emory’s Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) program.
Her selection this summer as one of just 20 Beinecke Scholars, and the accompanying $35,000 to support her graduate studies, has cemented Fitzgerald’s new plan: a life analyzing how and why we interact with one another, with an emphasis on the ways gender, race and sexuality overlap to alter individual and group patterns.
“I’ve realized how much I appreciate learning and that I want to do more research, so the question was how to access the resources to do it,” says Fitzgerald, a rising senior studying sociology with a minor in quantitative sciences.
“Emory opened the door,” Fitzgerald adds. “Winning the Beinecke has opened it a lot wider.”
Research that is ‘accessible and relevant’
As a QuestBridge Scholar raised by a single father in Chicago, Fitzgerald’s main career motivation was job security. Becoming a nurse would afford her that, even if it didn’t fit with her introverted nature.
That reserved temperament didn’t stop her from reaching out to Tosen Nwadei, then a doctoral candidate at Goizueta, when she heard about his work to study the intersection of intergroup relations and equality by zeroing in on Black women’s hair in predominantly white workplaces.
Nwadei added Fitzgerald to his team, becoming her first mentor. The work included conducting a literature review and surveying participants — her first experience with formal research.
Fitzgerald later contributed quantitative coding to the study as the project progressed with Nwadei, who is now an assistant professor at the University of Toronto.
“It really grounded things for me, to be able to see what research looks like,” Fitzgerald says. “It felt accessible and relevant.”
Sociology professor Karen Hegtvedt noticed how unflappable Fitzgerald seemed in her “Individual and Society” course. Fitzgerald, though just a sophomore at the time, always participated in class and office hours, and she even became a regular face at department lectures, armed with ideas and questions.
That persistence led Hegtvedt to agree to become Fitzgerald’s MMUF faculty mentor. “Lots of Emory students are ambitious, but without curiosity, they don’t go much beyond classroom learning,” says Hegtvedt, who also hired Fitzgerald as an undergraduate teaching assistant. “Courtney has the curiosity, and she digs in to find the answers.”
Aspirations and ambition
It helps that Fitzgerald enjoys the interviews associated with qualitative research and the quantitative coding work. She leverages both skill sets as a research assistant with Dianne Stewart on a follow-up to Stewart’s book “Black Women, Black Love: America’s War on African American Marriage.”
Stewart, the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Religion and African American Studies who also serves as the MMUF faculty coordinator, hired Fitzgerald shortly after meeting her during the program interview.
Engaging with Fitzgerald feels like “exchanging ideas with a junior colleague,” Stewart says, especially on topics related to quantitative research.
“Courtney’s research and carefully presented data sets have helped me to understand how class is impacting marriage and divorce rates among African American communities, which is not as easy to learn about as one might think,” Stewart says.
“She has adroit capabilities when it comes to the study of human behavior, especially when pursuing demographic research,” Stewart adds. “Her project on colorism and romantic partnering among Black lesbians is cutting-edge research that will impact numerous fields within and beyond the social sciences, including Black studies and gender and sexuality studies. Down the road, I look forward to teaching her scholarship and inviting her to present her research in my ‘Black Love’ course. That would be an enriching full-circle moment, for sure.”
Fitzgerald is continuing to gather data for her MMUF project this summer, interviewing Black lesbians about the prominence of their racial and sexual identities. The research will serve as a basis for an honors thesis and potentially more quantitative study in graduate school.
Megan Reed, an assistant professor of sociology, has seen Fitzgerald demonstrate her skills at uniting different literatures to create a truly novel research contribution. A social demographer, Reed pointed Fitzgerald toward her current plan: to enter a doctoral program at a university with a population studies center.
“I’m so happy to see how Courtney’s journey has developed over her time at Emory,” Reed says. “She is always thinking about new ideas and new things to test, which is ideal for someone interested in a career in research.”
In fact, Fitzgerald keeps a running list of ideas. The notes help her identify common themes and find ways she might incorporate new questions into her existing research.
The list also helps her juggle her busy academic schedule, plus her work at the Woodruff Library service desk and with the University Center Board, the programming arm of the Emory Student Center. This summer she continued her research work — and adding to her list — while still finding time to participate in several programs that encourage students to conduct research and apply to doctoral programs.
One such program, NextGenPop at Duke University, inspired a new project Fitzgerald hopes to complete in the coming year. Her idea is to develop an aggregate stress and happiness measure from the National Couples’ Health and Time Study, then plot the data to see how the impact of marriage potentially varies for same-sex couples compared to their heterosexual counterparts.
“I’m leaning into social demography, so if I can get the work done, I may be able to present to the Population Association of America in April,” Fitzgerald says.
“I have a lot of plates spinning,” she adds. “The experiences and mentors I have had at Emory have given me the ambitions I have now. The Beinecke definitely lets me know these are the aspirations I should have.”
Learn more about scholarshipsStudents interested in learning more about the Beinecke Scholarship and other prestigious awards should contact Megan Friddle in Emory’s National Scholarships and Fellowships Program, now part of the Pathways Center. Find more information or schedule an appointment through the National Scholarships and Fellowships Program website. |