In order to successfully navigate our rapidly changing world, it’s paramount that students seek to achieve academic excellence throughout their journey at John Jay College. The students featured in our “Academic Excellence” article series have actively demonstrated an outstanding ability to excel in their educational endeavors. As a result of their intellectual capacities, finely honed skills, and altruistic leadership qualities, these students are often selected for competitive programs, awards, scholarships, fellowships, and research opportunities that further enrich their studies. We hope that their accomplishments inspire us all to pursue excellence in our own academic and professional journeys.   

Tige Anderson ’22, a Macaulay Honors student and Forensic Psychology major, sees research as a vital part of his future career path. As a winner of the Clinton Global Initiative competition, a highly competitive program established by President Bill Clinton that supports students engaged in social justice projects, he’s enhancing his research skills. Under the mentorship of Professor Evan Mandery, Anderson and his fellow research cohorts have been working on projects related to a listening curriculum to improve listening skills in children, teenagers, and adults. Working specifically on the project focused on children, called The Adaptation Study of Creating a Listening Curriculum for Children, Anderson hopes to prove that empathy can be learned. “I’m on the autism spectrum, and I believe that empathy is something that can be taught to others because I learned it. Through this project, we’re hoping to learn if listening better is the key to greater empathy,” Anderson says. “My hope is to one day become a developmental psychology professor, and this project will not only give me more experience in research, but it will also help me build a strong application when I apply for graduate school.” We sat down with Anderson to discuss the project and what being recognized by the Clinton Global Initiative means to him.

How did you feel when you found out you were selected as a winner?
We worked nonstop to put together our application and submit it. When I found out that our project had been selected, I was very excited. It felt good because it provided a sense of validation. Other people are now able to see what we are working on and how important our work is.

Can you tell us about adapting the listening curriculum for children?
We already had a listening curriculum for teenagers and adults, but we wanted to adapt it for children. The age group we will be working with for this project is 12 and under. We hypothesize that we can raise empathy for children by teaching them how to listen better. I’ve noticed that children can be surprisingly and unintentionally cruel. They don’t mean it. They just haven’t developed a theory of mind yet—theory of mind is when a child comes to realize that other people think and feel outside of themselves. It serves as a foundation for social interactions. For a child, things stop existing when they look away from it. Once they’ve obtained theory of mind, they realize that there’s a whole world going on around them. Maybe if we can help them obtain that theory of mind at a young age, they can be more aware of each other and learn to listen to each other better. We are still in the process of creating the adaptation, so we don’t have the methodology completely worked out yet. But our research is being supported with this grant money from The Clinton Foundation, which is going to help a lot.

Why was it important for you to be part of this project?
I love doing research and I love working with children, so I am very excited to begin working on this because it is a developmental psychology project. I find the way that children talk to be very interesting. Children will call airplanes “hair-planes” because planes fly by where their hair is. This is wrong, but it’s interesting to think about how children reach that conclusion. One day, I want to be able to research childhood trauma because childhood trauma causes a lot of issues in adulthood. We have cognitive behavioral therapy, but I want to see if there is more that we can do in this field to help children. But for now, I’m looking forward to learning the answers to the questions that we are asking, and seeing if our hypothesis is correct.

What was it like working with Professor Mandery?
He’s a great professor and he’s helped me with my writing a lot. It’s a little cliché, but he taught me to never give up through his actions. I was working on a paper and went through several revisions. He has high standards, expects you to give your best, and won’t accept your paper until you give him something that is amazing. He’s definitely helped me improve my writing.

What advice would you give to John Jay students about doing research?
My advice to all John Jay students is to start doing research as soon as possible. You can never do enough research. The more research you do, the better off you will be as a student. As a person, research helps me to keep growing. It keeps me thinking, asking questions, and being curious. I am very inquisitive by nature. I want to know everything. Doing research has reaffirmed that I want to continue doing this kind of work.

What are your goals and aspirations for the future?
In the next five years, I see myself either in graduate school or starting my career as a professor. I’d love to stay at John Jay for graduate school and possibly teach at the College. As a student, person, and researcher, I really like everything that John Jay offers.