Emily Ready, BA ’13, may still be an undergraduate student, but she already has two scholarly papers on her resume. One research paper she co-wrote has been published, while another has been submitted to a second scholarly journal. This is a rare achievement for an undergraduate student.

Psychology Honours Student Emily Ready BA'12 Co-Authors Scholarly Papers
By: Khairunnisa Intiar BA'13
Published: Friday, Aug 3, 2012

Emily Ready, BA ’13, may still be an undergraduate student, but she already has two scholarly papers on her resume.

One research paper she co-wrote has been published, while another has been submitted to a second scholarly journal. This is a rare achievement for an undergraduate student.

“I feel like I’ve achieved something pretty big because I definitely didn’t think that by now I’d have a paper published,” she said.

The research papers explore the area of eyewitness testimony.

Ready co-wrote “To Legislate or Not to Legislate: Encouraging the Law to Recognise Advances in the Science of Eyewitness Testimony” with psychology professor Dr. Ian Fraser and Professor Louise Bond-Fraser, who is teaching in the English Department. It was recently submitted to the American Association of Behavioral and Social Sciences Perspectives Journal.

“Research into Eyewitness Accuracy: Is it Being Taught to Law Students?” is Ready’s second paper and was completed as part her course work last year. The paper demonstrates that law students in Canada don’t have a firm grasp of the fallibility of eyewitness testimony. It was co-written with Fraser, Bond-Fraser and psychology professor Dr. Michael Houlihan. It was published in the Alberta Law Review Supplement in July.

From Fredericton, NB, Ready is entering her final year at St. Thomas and is completing an honours degree in Psychology with a minor in Criminology.

This past year, she also had the chance to combine these subject areas in her honours research work.

“It was nice to see one of my alternative interests combined with psychology when I was studying it in school,” she said.

Research opportunities were an important factor in Ready’s choice of a university. As a smaller undergraduate institution, St. Thomas gives students opportunities to take part in faculty research. This is in addition to the very good student-to-professor ratio and the attention that professors can give to their students.

“At bigger institutions, where they have graduate students, a lot of professors are more concerned about how their grad students are doing. It also helps here because you get the chance to talk to professors and brainstorm,” she added.

Her supervisor Dr. Ian Fraser agrees with her assessment.

“Because we are an undergraduate university, in essence, Emily is my master’s student. And so Emily is getting the advantages that a grad student would in a larger institution,” he said.

Ready plans to continue research for her honours thesis during her final year at STU.

To learn more about the Psychology program at STU, please see the link below.

http://w3.stu.ca/stu/academic/programmes/pdfs/psychology.pdf