Physical Stress and Academic Performance

Sara Goldrick-Rab:

I've been preoccupied by sleep lately. Not sleeping -- though as I approach the end of my first trimester I sure could use some -- but sleep itself. What it means to sleep a little or a lot, how it affects your daily interactions with others, etc. This is something I know a tiny bit about, having spent a solid year sleep-deprived after the birth of my first child, but not something I've devoted my academic time to.

Until now. I just spent two full days at the Cells to Society (C2S) Summer Biomarker Institute. C2S is also known as the Center on Social Disparities and Health at Northwestern University. It's directed by developmental psychologist Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, and has additional star power in folks like Thom McDade, Emma Adam, and Chris Kuzawa. These are social science researchers who have mastered the hard sciences as well, and are using medical tools to get at how social practices and environments "get under the skin."

What does that mean? Well, to explain I'll tell you why I'm thinking about sleep. It all begins with an attempt to understand the reasons why so many low-income kids drop out of college. A big problem, to be sure -- and one that we still don't know enough about. I'm thinking that has to do with the limited number of ways in which we've approached the problem. It's primarily treated as an educational issue, one we tackle with a combination of college practices and individual-level incentives like money.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at June 12, 2009 1:33 AM
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