Psychology Professors Publish with Alumni

Angelo Roche ’24 recently published an article, “Summer camp counselor experiences: The influence of training, self-efficacy, and organizational cohesion” based on their St. Mary's Project in the Journal of Outdoor Recreation, Education, and Leadership along with their SMP mentor Professor of Psychology Libby Williams. This work was previously presented by Angelo at the American Camping Association Conference in February 2025 in Dallas, TX and at the L. Starling Reid Undergraduate Psychology Conference hosted by the University of Virginia in April 2025. 

Many overnight camps use Counselor-in-Training (CIT) programs to prepare adolescent campers for the counselor role. Although research has investigated the efficacy of individual CIT programs, studies have not compared the experiences of previous CITs to the experiences of new, non-CIT counselors across camp types. In this study researchers recruited 314 camp counselors (130 previous CITs and 185 non-CITs) from camps across the US and Canada for an online survey assessing their self-efficacy and organizational cohesion and other items related to their experiences as first-year counselors. The majority of the sample reported positive experiences. Although CIT completion did not correlate significantly with any variable, individual and camp factors such as job fit, satisfaction with training and comfort talking to administrators correlated with self-efficacy and organizational cohesion. More between-camps research is needed to examine training, overall climate and the true efficacy of CIT programs. 

Roche is currently a full-time teacher assistant/1:1 aide at The Katherine Thomas School and pursuing a M.S. in marriage and family therapy part-time at Syracuse University. 

Assistant Professor of Psychology Gili Freedman and collaborators including Shannon Lutz '25 and Drew Sonnenberg '22recently published an article “It’s not personal: The use of deflections in social rejection” in The Journal of Social Psychology. The research, some of which was presented at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association in May 2025 in Washington, DC., was conducted when Lutz did directed research with Freedman and Sonnenberg was Freedman’s lab manager. In this paper, researchers examined the language of social rejection and specifically how deflections--phrases designed to make people feel like they weren't rejected because of who they are or because of how the rejector feels about them--affect rejectors and rejectees. Some deflections include "it's not personal," "no hard feelings," and "no offense." They found that both rejectors and rejectees like rejections with deflections better than rejections without, and that deflections like "nothing personal" were the best received. 

Lutz is currently pursuing a M.S. in counseling psychology at The University of Johns Hopkins and Sonnenberg is an academic program administrator for the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at The Johns Hopkins University.