My Story

I grew up in rural Montana, and graduated from Whitehall High School in 2017. I’ve always been interested in how my brain works and how I have an *experience*. That said, before I graduated, I had no idea what it would mean to study and research this. My junior year of high school, they asked us what we wanted to go to college for. I wrote that I was “interested in the science behind how my brain works”. The school counselor called me to her office one afternoon and asked if I had meant “neuroscience”. I had never heard of it before, but when I looked it up, it felt like I had found a door to a different world. I learned that there is something called a “field of study” where people can dedicate their careers to exploring the kinds of questions I was interested in! I knew then that I wanted to go to college to study neuroscience.

It didn’t take long for me to find UM’s neuroscience program, and when I found out about the opportunities for undergraduate research, I knew this was the place for me. While my degree plan emphasized cognitive neuroscience, I wanted a deeper dive into the psychological aspects, so I added psychology as a degree. I also enrolled in the Franke Global Leadership Initiative.

I was able to participate as an undergraduate research assistant in the UM Living Lab, conducting experiments in Developmental Psychology. Additionally, I was lucky to be a science educator at spectrUM Discovery Area.

Since graduating in December of 2022, I have been working with UM’s Office of Research and Creative Scholarship. With the Broader Impacts Group, I manage our statewide educational outreach program We Are Montana in the Classroom. I feel strongly that curiosity is worth cultivating, and passion is worth pursuing, even if you aren’t yet sure where it will lead. I take this energy into the program, and advocate that students should not be required to name a career path (or even name a subject) in order for their interests to be validated. I hope to inspire students by giving them access to Role Models who might broaden their ideas of *potential*. It’s one thing to be told that you can do something when you grow up, but it’s something else to see someone do it, especially if you feel like it’s someone like you. Our visits are meant to offer both hands-on/minds-on engagement as well as authentic connection with the role model.

I also work with the Office of Undergraduate Research to expand the undergraduate research experience. I help organize our annual undergraduate research conference (UMCUR), as well as assist the director to increase engagement in research and creative scholarship. Similar to my program, one of my goals is to help foster a culture of curiosity and creativity. I believe that research is for anyone who has questions - that is to say, I believe that research is for everyone! You don’t have to be a scientist to do research, and you don’t even have to know anything to get started. I hope that we can continue make research and creative scholarship more accessible, as well as build a community of support for our undergraduate scholars.

Education - University of Montana

• B.A., Psychology
• B.S., Neuroscience
• Certificate of Global Leadership

(I will attend graduate school within the next few years to pursue my doctorate. I aspire to be a developmental neuropsychologist, conducting research into our sense and perception of self. I aim to create materials that help children and adults build more stable and positive relationships with themselves. I suspect that we are able to mold our self-construct, even as adults, into something that we can respect and admire - regardless of the conditions of our childhood. I hope to conduct functional imaging studies to better understand which parts of our nervous systems process our sense of self, and how these parts are affected by our environment.)

Presentations + Publications

Smith K (2022) Learning to see human: universal aspects and cultural variations in the development of anthropomorphism. University of Montana Conference on Undergraduate Research (UMCUR). https://scholarworks.umt.edu/umcur/2022/330/8/

Sykes S, Peacock H, Vineyard JT, Randle T, Smith K, Donier L, Liston K, Chandler E (2021) Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on UMT Students' Mental Health. University of Montana Conference on Undergraduate Research (UMCUR). https://scholarworks.umt.edu/umcur/2021/gli/1