Students experiencing discrimination and living through the pandemic have something in common: feeling isolated.
It’s a topic being explored in a paper by senior math and economics major Fiona Chen on remote learning and its effect on academic performance. Chen is using support from the MindHandHeart Innovation Fund and a
Peter J. Eloranta Fellowship to perform on a study on how Covid-19 and students’ online activities affect their productivity.
“As the Covid-19 pandemic continues, it’s difficult not to equate social distancing with social isolation, and often the loneliness that comes with our new normal,” said one of the students participating in her study. “I think it’s really important, especially as a college student, to have conversations about the effects of social isolation on our ability to learn from and connect with the people both in and outside of our virtual classrooms.”