Maren Durand: Webs of research and exploration

As a prospective student from Arden Hills, Minnesota — a town about as populous as UW-Eau Claire — Maren Durand was invited to participate in the Blugold Fellowship program. Her interest was piqued. As a first-year student, would she really receive a paid opportunity to involve herself in faculty research partnerships? 

At the time, that program merely set UW-Eau Claire apart among Durand's other college contenders. Now in her senior year, Durand sees the Blugold Fellowship as a crucial building block to her success. A third-year senior psychology major, Durand says the program pushed her out of her shell by introducing her to professors at the university and cultivating a drive for research collaboration. 

Although she is keeping her post-grad options open for now, Durand's work at UW-Eau Claire has given her a deep sense of appreciation for human subjects research — the study of populations with lives and passions as diverse as her own.

Spinning into the Blugold Fellowship

Durand’s choice of a psychology major at UW-Eau Claire may have started with an enriching high school experience taking Advanced Placement psychology, but a university-offered Psychology Day quickly solidified her decision. That Blugold Fellowship invitation connected her immediately to Dr. Michael Axelrod, a professor in the psychology department and director of the Human Development Center (HDC). The two embarked on research together, facilitating socio-emotional learning for at-risk adolescents by developing activities on anger, anxiety and stress management skills. Being part of Axelrod’s team for four semesters allowed Durand to hone her research skills, and it also led her to local and national conference presentations.

“I was able to present at CERCA both years,” Durand recalls, “and then I also got to present at the National Association of School Psychologists Conference, which was in Seattle, so that was really cool to get to travel.”

Durand continued to work with Axelrod and the speech, language and hearing sciences students at the HDC. She served as an Education and Learning Team intern, a role where she learned to assess student behaviors and academics, and to help implement interventions for their lives at school and home. Her work gave her many opportunities to apply her outgoing nature to new professional curiosities.

“It was cool because it was interdisciplinary,” recalls Durand, “so we got to work with school psychology students and graduate students in the CDS program, and just a bunch of different people collaborating.”

Guiding webs and the Cosby Honors College

The Honors Living Learning Community, stationed in Bridgman Hall, offers a diving board for first-years in the Mark Stephen Cosby Honors College — and for Durand, the LLC’s early move-in activities remain a highlight of her time at UW-Eau Claire.

“It was just fun to have a group and to get to know the campus before everyone got there, because it was less scary than when everybody arrived," Durand says. "It was like, oh, we already knew where the buildings were, we knew how to work our meal plans ... and then we got to know Dr. Fielding and Kim (Wellnitz) better too.”

With every honors course, Durand found beauty in the diversity of student academic and personal backgrounds. For Durand, in-major coursework quickly became echo chambers of similar views and recognizable faces. But, in honors college courses, Durand recalls fondly the different ideas, degree goals and professional ambitions that surrounded her.

"Learning to listen to other people's opinions and share your own opinions is interesting because that's not always something that you get to do in college classes when you're just being lectured at,” Durand says.

Departmental dewdrops

One of Durand’s memorable honors experiences was an honors section of a departmental class, “Introduction to Social Work.” There, her professor, Molly Bonlender, assistant professor of social work, persuaded Durand to enroll in a more advanced course she was also teaching, “Understanding Trauma,” which quickly became a favorite.

Durand later enrolled in a directed studies program with Bonlender, where she aided in the redesign of that “Understanding Trauma” course. She and Bonlender reexamined course content, created detailed rubrics and used universal design principles, focusing on assignment transparency and accessibility. What originated as a credit-filling honors course blossomed into perspective-altering training, which introduced Durand to the background workings of higher education.

“I think it gave me a little window into what it would be like to be a professor or something like a teaching role if I'm interested in it," Durand says. "It was interesting to have the experience. You need to have the experience to know if you like or don't like it.”

After Durand served as a student academic apprentice for the psychology department’s research methods course, her instructor, Dr. Jarrod Hines, professor of psychology, invited her to yet another collaboration, this time on a one-on-one research project where they explored eating disorders and associated student resources on campus. Working with the National Eating Disorder Association, Durand and Hines developed a mock program that could be implemented into mainstream campus informational resources.

For Durand, each academic opportunity shines like a shimmering dewdrop on an ever-growing academic web. Reflecting on them now, Durand thinks her education has hinged on this open perspective, learning how individuals think and using that understanding to inform and educate public audiences about nuanced scientific research.

“You know, it gets complicated. So having to explain it was very different than doing it myself. I think that was rewarding to try to figure out how to better help people learn,” Durand says.

Spinning new webs

Given her breadth of academic experience — to say nothing of her time as the service team coordinator for Oaks International Campus Ministry, or as an administrative assistant at her local summer camp — Durand is still whittling down her list of post-graduation opportunities. Whatever those plans hold, however, Durand believes her time in the honors college will remain foundational to her future success.

“I'm more into trying new things, which is kind of what honors is all about — trying new classes, trying new topics and getting involved in things that you didn't think you'd think were interesting,” Durand says.

From intellectual creativity to interdisciplinary cooperation, both the Blugold Fellowship and the honors college at UW-Eau Claire helped Durand tap a network of new connections, mentors and professional dreams. Both helped her spin a first web of big dreams and broad perspectives, but among them Durand discovered the confidence to spin her own.

Written by Zoe Eineichner, a third-year junior at UW-Eau Claire double-majoring in psychology and organizational communication and pursuing graduate school for industrial-organizational psychology. Her hometown is Mukwonago.