Cognitive Neuroscience Ph.D. Alumni Testimonials
“One of the most enriching requirements for the Cognitive Neuroscience program for me was presenting my research at brown bags once a year. Through these experiences, I learned how to appropriately prepare for a talk, how to effectively convey information verbally, and methods of keeping calm while speaking in front of a group. I use all of the skills on a daily basis as a high school teacher.”
— Breana Carter, PhD ’18, High School AP Psychology Teacher at St. John's College High School
“My experience in the Cognitive Neuroscience PhD program at GWU prepared me well for my career as a researcher and teacher. In particular, my mentors involved me in research quickly and effectively. This enabled me to drive through the inevitable, early, slow part of the learning curve. Initially discovering how much you don’t know can be a little paralyzing. My mentors introduced me to a digestible chunk of literature addressing a relatively concrete and tractable debate early on which allowed me to feel like I might be able to make real contributions. This feeling was critical for motivating me to dive in and invest the time and energy off the bat so that I could power through the flat part of the learning curve and gain the confidence to be an effective researcher relatively early on. So the program did a good job fostering my intrinsic interest and motivation, enabling me to produce enough to have some success in a competitive field.”
— Jesse Sargent, PhD ’09, Associate Professor at Francis Marion University
“...I learned and honed lab skills: learned basic Unix commands, programming in E-Prime, learned how to run analyses in SPSS and learned how to use formulas and graph in Excel (I learned all of these in [my mentor's] lab).”
— Becky Weldon, PhD ’12, Assistant Professor at Juniata College
“In the Cognitive Neuroscience program, I could gain experience in all the essential steps for scientific research - defining a research question, designing and running experiments on human subjects, analysing data, and writing up the results for publication. It gave me a strong foundation and confidence to continue research on human cognition and behavior.
The research experiences at the Cognitive Neuroscience program gave me an opportunity to figure out what interests me most, and the chance to develop necessary skills and network to pursue my career path in academia.”
— Jeongmi Lee, PhD ’13, Assistant Professor at KAIST, Daejeon, South Korea