In the social media era, you can look at a university’s Instagram feed and get the impression that every day rates a 10/10 and everyone belongs. But Shannon Brady, a Wake Forest University psychology professor who studies the implications of social belonging, cautions you to look deeper. Smiles on faces and free hoodies emblazoned with…
Categories: Experts, Research & Discovery
When William Farfan-Rios hikes through the remote forests of the Peruvian Amazon and Andes, he’s doing much more than feeding his appreciation for the natural world. He’s trying to identify the trees that can survive a warming climate—and, ultimately, save one of the world’s largest carbon sinks from collapse. As a biodiversity fellow in forest…
Categories: Experts, Research & Discovery
You might have seen headlines sounding the alarm about the safety of an emerging technology called agentic AI. That’s where Sarra Alqahtani comes in. An associate professor of computer science at Wake Forest University, she studies the safety of AI agents through the new field of multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL). Alqahtani received a National Science…
Categories: Experts, Research & Discovery
Volunteering while studying at Wake Forest University has changed senior Reagan Smith’s life, given her a greater sense of purpose—and earned her a Community Impact Student Award from North Carolina Campus Engagement (NCCE). Every year, the award goes to a student at each participating NCCE member school. The organization is a statewide network of colleges…
Categories: Pro Humanitate
Students are more likely to attain their degree when they report a stronger sense of belonging in their first year of college, according to a new study by Wake Forest University psychology professor Shannon Brady. A one-point increase on a five-point belonging scale corresponded to a 3.4 percentage-point bump in the likelihood that a student…
Categories: Research & Discovery