This year, I attended hands-on sessions on how finding stories in data sets at the National Institute for Computer Assisted Reporting conference. I was able to network and meet fellow investigative journalists while also learning advanced techniques in creating graphics. For my environmental investigative journalism internship in Durban, South Africa over the summer, I applied all of these skills I learned from NICAR and used those resources to construct a investigative, multimedia article that reported on the impacts of mining on freshwater. https://oxpeckers.org/2019/08/fracking-sas-water-tower/

I also conducted research in Dr. Ruth Day’s Memory for Movement lab, examining the linguistic codability of figure skating movements—or the ease with which people can name them. Codability was measured using reaction time, length of response, and agreement across participants. High codable movements have shorter reaction times and more concise names. If linguistic codability of items is an effective cue for learning and remembering skating movements, then high codable items will be remembered better than low codable ones.The content of non-skaters’ responses was often vivid and compelling. Their responses may suggest more effective methods for teaching and perfecting jumps and other figure skating movements.