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Welcome to the first Synapse Lab seminar this semester!
Time: Friday September 20th from 10:45 to 11:45
Place: Room 276/277 in Elise Ottesen Jensens house, University of Stavanger.
Our presenter is Danila Serra from Texas A&M University.
Serra will present an interesting education RCT:
"My Department Cares: Supporting Students through Encouragement Emails."
We examine the impact of an intervention targeting all economics majors at a large public university with the aim of providing encouragement during challenging periods in the semester. We randomly selected students who would receive six weekly emails on behalf of the department of economics during the latter half of the Fall 2021 semester. Drawing insights from studies in social psychology, we designed the emails with the aim of enhancing students' sense of belonging, self-efficacy and growth mindset, while providing information about available resources.
In addition, for a subsample of the treated students, each email featured a peer role model, i.e., a former student who had recently graduated from the same university. A third treatment group also received an encouragement message from the featured role model. We find evidence of a positive impact of the encouragement emails on women's academic performance, notably driven by under-represented minority (URM) women. Our analysis of mechanisms points at improvements in URM women's growth mindset and emotional well-being. These results underscore the critical role of a supportive learning environment in promoting academic success, particularly among students from traditionally marginalized backgrounds.
To sign up for a meeting, lunch or dinner with Danila Serra, please click on the link.
The seminar will be in English. Everyone is welcome to participate!