Hello! My name is Sydney Sheffield, and I am a rising junior studying Public Health and Chinese on the pre-medical track. For the past year, I have been working as a research assistant for Dr. Katherine Johnson and Dr. Alyssa Lederer’s project that melds the fields of Sociology and Public Health. Thanks to the generosity of NCI and the Reproductive Rights and Reproductive Health Internship, I have been able to continue working under Dr. Johnson and Dr. Lederer through the summer.
When Tulane’s climate survey results were released in January 2018, among other things they revealed that 41% of undergraduate women, including 51% of LGBQ+ women and 39% of heterosexual women, and 18% of undergraduate men, including 44% of GBQ+ men and 13% of heterosexual men, reported experiencing sexual assault since enrolling at Tulane. In the wake of this release, groups across campus began, or continued, designing various initiatives to combat these staggering numbers. One such initiative arose from a group of faculty members who outlined the curriculum for a new course called “Sex, Power, and Culture.” In Fall 2018, approximately 100 first-year students took the course in its pilot semester. In tandem, Dr. Johnson and Dr. Lederer designed a study to investigate the extent to which the course impacted the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of these first-year students regarding sexuality, sexual health, and sexual violence.
As a woman, a feminist, and a friend to many survivors, I am committed to finding solutions to the sexual violence epidemic afflicting Tulane, the US, and beyond. I believe understanding the root of the problem and exploring a semester-long course as a potential intervention–both of which this study hopes to contribute work to– can serve as building blocks for the fight against sexual violence. Thus far, my work has consisted of conducting literature reviews and participating in qualitative data collection through interviewing a sample of the first-year students in the pilot class. I have been incredibly impressed by the impact the course has had on these students so far as well as their dedication to spreading their knowledge to the rest of Tulane’s student body. I am excited to continue working with Dr. Johnson, Dr. Lederer, and graduate research assistant Jessica Liddell, eager to see how the results of this study may contribute to changing Tulane’s campus climate for the better, and grateful for the opportunity to be a part of such meaningful research.