杏吧原创

At first, criminal justice major Daniela Pe帽a thought of research as a practical means to an end.

Even before she started at UMass Lowell, she figured she might earn a master鈥檚 degree, and she knew that research skills would be required. So she accepted an invitation to join the Honors College after hearing about its programs to connect students with faculty for research, culminating in a senior year honors thesis.

鈥淗onestly, the honors thesis is what motivated me to say, 鈥極K, I鈥檒l embark on this journey of honors,鈥欌�� she says.

But Pe帽a fell in love with research during her first year. Now, she plans on earning a master鈥檚 degree in security studies at UML before applying to Ph.D. programs and embarking on a research career.聽

A stellar student at Lawrence High School, where she spent her junior and senior years after mostly growing up in the Dominican Republic, Pe帽a signed up for a one-credit career exploration class in her first semester at UML. She originally planned on majoring in political science and becoming a lawyer, but found herself more interested in the criminal justice classes.聽

Through a career exploration assignment, she met Prof. April Pattavina (now chair of the School of Criminology and Justice Studies), who offered her a job as a paid research assistant. Pe帽a helped Pattavina analyze how the COVID-19 pandemic affected sentencing and incarceration in Italy.

鈥淪he took a pretty big leap of faith and hired me spring semester of freshman year, but I think it worked out,鈥� says Pe帽a, modestly, 鈥渂ecause she hired me that summer to do some (English-Spanish) translations of surveys in correctional facilities and some data entry.鈥�

From then on, Pe帽a was hooked on research.聽

She used a $4,000 Immersive Scholarship to spend her sophomore year assisting Assoc. Prof. Claire Lee on several research projects: how terrorist groups use the internet to recruit supporters and plan attacks; cyberstalking within personal relationships; and racist attacks on Asian Americans after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lee also paid Pe帽a to stay on for the summer and fall of 2023.

In spring of 2024, Pe帽a found a new research assistantship with Asst. Prof. Emily Greene-Colozzi, who has a three-year, $985,000 grant from the National Institute of Justice to analyze whether state 鈥渞ed flag鈥� laws are effective in reducing mass shootings. Such laws aim to prevent people in a mental health crisis from accessing guns.

Pe帽a can鈥檛 say enough about the value of getting research experience early in her undergraduate years.

鈥淭he things I learn in class I apply to the research I鈥檓 doing, and the things I鈥檝e learned in the training sessions for the research have prepared me for work in my classes,鈥� she says.

Now, Pe帽a is ready to do original research. Her project, a comparative study of how different anti-abortion groups use violence, was inspired by a graduate class she enrolled in as part of the bachelor鈥檚-to-master鈥檚 program: Domestic Terrorism and Violent Extremism, with Prof. Arie Perliger.

She鈥檚 also getting teaching and public speaking experience 鈥� which will help her become a researcher or professor someday 鈥� by working another job as a 鈥渄igital navigator鈥� under a $4 million state grant to UML to promote digital equity in Lowell, Haverhill and Fitchburg.聽

Pe帽a, who has a minor in English, uses her ease with two languages to teach basic computer skills to adults at the Lowell YWCA and recent immigrants studying English in the Lowell Public Schools鈥� adult education center.聽

鈥淲hen I look at them, I see people I know: my mom, my family, my community,鈥� says Pe帽a, who commutes to campus by bus from her family home in Lawrence, Massachusetts. 鈥淪o if I can make their lives a little bit better teaching them something new, I鈥檓 happy to.鈥�