{"id":1216,"date":"2026-01-29T11:20:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T17:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/cir\/?page_id=1216"},"modified":"2026-01-29T11:20:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T17:20:00","slug":"projects-for-2025-26","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/cir\/projects-for-2025-26\/","title":{"rendered":"Projects for 2025-26"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Understanding Overlapping Risk Factors to Transform Student Outcomes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Domain Experts<\/strong>
Northfield Public Schools
Carrie Duba: cduba@northfieldschools.org<\/a>
Hope Langston: hlangston@northfieldschools.org<\/a>
Stats: <\/strong>Paul Roback and Carlos Ch\u00e1vez
CIR fellows: <\/strong>Siri Sagedahl, Cathal Mee, Noah Jansen<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With increased focus on efficient, timely and targeted strategies that address the academic and social-emotional well-being of students, there is a growing need to identify patterns that can help educators intervene early, equitably, and effectively. This research examines the intersection of absenteeism, social-emotional well-being, behavior incidents, course grades, and standardized assessment outcomes to develop a predictive student profile that can guide early identification and targeted intervention efforts. Using a student-centered framework, we aim to better understand how overlapping risk indicators impact student trajectories and how data can be leveraged to support timely, individualized responses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The year-long study uses four years of longitudinal data from Northfield High School and Northfield Middle School, encompassing students in grades 6 through 12. The dataset includes attendance rates, social-emotional wellness screener results, behavior incident reports, GPA, and Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment  and local assessment scores from the 2021\u20132022 through 2024\u20132025 academic years. The first phase of the work involves descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis to uncover key associations between variables, with an emphasis on identifying early-warning thresholds and cumulative risk factors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Belonging Over Time<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Domain Experts<\/strong>
St Olaf FYS Lauren Feiler
Brandon Cash
Sarah Jurewicz
Stats<\/strong>: Joe Roith
CIR fellows: <\/strong>Victory Ma, Garrett Fitzgerald, Sofia Hamilton<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New students at St. Olaf answer many surveys, starting in the summer before they come to campus. These surveys help us learn whether new students feel like they belong at St. Olaf and where they might need help from faculty, staff, or peers. Since belonging is important for academic, mental, emotional, and social success in college, the same four questions related to belonging are included in multiple surveys. This allows for tracking overall belonging with each new class, and the repeated battery of questions provides an opportunity to look at patterns over time. Do the peaks and troughs of self-reported belonging look similar every year, or have patterns changed over the past five years? Do responses within demographic groups remain stable over time? We might also identify some key survey questions for understanding the incoming students. Some responses might be important for connecting students with specific outreach or identifying trends, while others might be so highly correlated that they are redundant. This work could help shorten future surveys for new students while providing sharper insights from each survey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lipid Droplets in Tetrahymena<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Domain Expert<\/strong>
Kim Kandl, St Olaf Biology professor
Stats: <\/strong>Kim Mandery
CIR fellows:<\/strong> Angelo Fiataruolo, Sophie Johnson, Emma Clift<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lipid droplets are fat storage organelles in cells. Our research examines the formation and function of lipid droplets inTetrahymena thermophila<\/em>, a freshwater single celled organism that is evolutionarily distinct from better studied organisms such as plants and animals. We have shown that Tetrahymena<\/em> mobilize fats and accumulate lipid droplets in response to starvation, an observation that is seen in all organisms studied to date. The figure below shows microscopy images of Tetrahymena<\/em> stained with a lipophilic dye that fluoresces lipid droplets (seen as bright dots). Well-fed Tetrahymena <\/em>have smaller and fewer lipid droplets compared to starved cells. Note that starved cells are also smaller in size compared to fed cells (the white scale bar is 20 micrometers in both images). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our research aims to further define the nutritional conditions that trigger intracellular fat accumulation. For these studies, we grow Tetrahymena<\/em> in \u201ccomplete\u201d media that has all of the nutrients that are required for growth or in media lacking specific nutrients. We have obtained thousands of images of cells growing in different media, and we need a way to easily count the number of lipid droplets. Current counting methods include actual counting, which is very slow and tedious, or using software that has been developed for other purposes that often either over or under count lipid droplets. CIR students will work to develop an image analysis program that can assess the number of lipid droplets in Tetrahymena<\/em> cells. Students will first develop a program trained by previously hand-counted data, then apply the program to new cell images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before the 19th<\/sup> Amendment: The Economic and Political Motivations for Women’s Clubs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Domain Experts<\/strong>
Noah McKinnie Braun: St Olaf economics visiting professor
Stats: <\/strong>Jaime Davila
CIR fellows<\/strong>: Aria Whalen, Jenna Graf, Ben Lim<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This project investigates the emergence, expansion, and political significance of women’s clubs in the United States from the mid-19th to the early 20th century. Women’s clubs were a foundational institution for female civic engagement prior to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, particularly among upper-middle-class women. Yet their role in shaping broader political and policy outcomes\u2014both before and after suffrage\u2014remains understudied. To study the impact of these organizations, we will combine historical directories\u2014including the Official Directory of Women’s Clubs (1904\u20131911), the General Federation of Women\u2019s Clubs (GFWC) reports (1893\u20131911), National Association of Women\u2019s Clubs (NAWC) directories, and Pittsburgh Women’s Club rosters\u2014with U.S. census and electoral data to construct a novel dataset of women\u2019s club activity across time and space. This data will be linked to legislative voting records, local public spending, and indicators of social reform to study the influence of women\u2019s civic networks on political behavior and policy outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first step in this project will utilize optical character recognition (OCR) software to digitize GFWC and NAWC reports to create a dataset of women\u2019s clubs across the United States, including their name, location, time of creation, and organizational goals. Following this step, we will begin the process of merging this dataset with data from the U.S. census and create a model that predicts the timing of the formation of a new women\u2019s club in a given city. With this information, we hope to identify a source of exogenous variation in either the timing or location of new women\u2019s clubs to estimate their impact on public finances and political outcomes in an instrumental variables framework. Students will have the opportunity to do novel data collection using OCR, generate predictive models using regression techniques, and learn the widely used instrumental variables approach to causal inference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This work builds on studies such as Braun (2021), which links female scarcity to earlier suffrage extensions, and Bertocchi (2022), which theorizes women\u2019s enfranchisement as a function of evolving household-level political preferences. It also draws on McCammon et al. (2001), who emphasize the role of gendered opportunity structures in enabling state-level suffrage movements. By focusing on voluntary associations rather than legal enfranchisement alone, this project highlights the informal networks that mobilized political change and shaped the scope of women\u2019s citizenship beyond the ballot box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Characterizing outcomes of participant engagement in recovery journeys on a digital support platform<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Domain Experts<\/strong>
Andy Morgan and David Wellstone, Pathfinder Solutions
Stats: <\/strong>Kathryn Ziegler-Graham
CIR fellows: <\/strong>Daniel Evans, Mary Kreklow, Zach Martin<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Face-to-face support systems and in-person social networks are strongly linked to improved treatment outcomes in substance use disorder recovery. Research in this area has identified a dose-response relationship\u2014greater levels of engagement are associated with better recovery trajectories. As clinical, emotional, and peer support increasingly incorporate digital platforms to complement traditional methods, patterns of participant engagement in these hybrid models are not well understood. This project seeks to quantify and characterize engagement among participants and clinicians using digital recovery support tools alongside conventional treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students will collaborate with a community-based organization dedicated to enhancing recovery programs for substance use disorders. Specifically, the project will explore: (1) How engagement levels evolve over time; (2) How types of engagement vary across different stages of recovery; (3) The strength and influence of specific support relationships (e.g., counselor, peer, resource specialist) throughout the recovery process; (4) How patterns of engagement vary by clinical care providers\/practices.  The long-term objective is to assess whether integrating digital support services contributes to improved treatment outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flickinger, T. E., Waselewski, M., Tabackman, A., Huynh, J., Hodges, J., Otero, K., Schorling, K., Ingersoll, K., Tiouririne, N. A.-D., & Dillingham, R. (2022). Communication between patients, peers, and care providers through a mobile health intervention supporting medication-assisted treatment for opioid use disorder.<\/a> Patient Education and Counseling, 105(7), 2110\u20132115. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.pec.2022.02.014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ashford, R. D., Giorgi, S., Mann, B., Pesce, C., Sherritt, L., Ungar, L., & Curtis, B. (2020). Digital recovery networks: Characterizing user participation, engagement, and outcomes of a novel recovery social network smartphone application<\/a>. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 109, 50\u201355. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.jsat.2019.11.005<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amer, M., Gittins, R., Millana, A. M., Scheibein, F., Ferri, M., Tofighi, B., Sullivan, F., Handley, M., Ghosh, M., Baldacchino, A., & Teck, J. T. W. (2025). Are Treatment Services Ready for the Use of Big Data Analytics and AI in Managing Opioid Use Disorder?<\/a> Journal of Medical Internet Research, 27(1), Article 58723. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.2196\/58723<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CIR 2023-22 Video Presentation <\/a>and Poster<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scialanca M., Alexander K., Tofighi B. (2025). Digital Psychosocial Interventions Tailored for People in Opioid Use Disorder Treatment: Scoping Review<\/a> Journal of Medical Internet Research, 27(1), Article 69538. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.2196\/69538<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Understanding Overlapping Risk Factors to Transform Student Outcomes Domain ExpertsNorthfield Public SchoolsCarrie Duba: cduba@northfieldschools.orgHope Langston: hlangston@northfieldschools.orgStats: Paul Roback and Carlos Ch\u00e1vezCIR fellows: Siri Sagedahl, Cathal Mee, Noah Jansen With increased […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10462,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1216","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/cir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/cir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/cir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/cir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10462"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/cir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1216"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/cir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1222,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/cir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1216\/revisions\/1222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/cir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}