Taneytown resident Caroline Freundel conducts research on how families were affected by COVID pandemic
Freundel is a sophomore sociology major at Hamilton College
Clinton, NY (08/27/2021) — Continuing a project that began in 2020, Taneytown resident and Hamilton College sophomore Caroline Freundel worked this summer with Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology Mahala Stewart and three other students to survey how families have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Freundel and the other students interviewed local parents, mostly mothers, to gain a better understanding of how their lives and households have changed over the course of the past year. The research was supported by the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center.
The culmination of the project will be a group presentation, which will accompany independent papers written by the four students. Topics include parents in the pandemic workplace, relating the social implications of natural disasters to those of COVID, and intersectionality.
The interviewees were mostly working- and middle-class white families whose experiences navigating at-home school and childcare provide the basis for the student researchers to pursue their independent projects. They compiled a shared database of interviews, online articles, and other relevant resources, keeping in touch with each other throughout the study.
This "independent teamwork," helped the student researchers - who represent different class years and levels of experience with research - to "focus on the areas we need to grow," they said.
The project began with Stewart herself, who interviewed a number of families last summer and winter. After sending out a survey to gauge interest, the four students were able to determine which families to follow up with this summer
Along with asking about the pandemic, the team touched on race in their conversations with parents, in an attempt to understand how they are speaking with their children about the subject.
Caroline Freundel is a graduate of Francis Scott Key High School
Originally founded in 1793 as the Hamilton-Oneida Academy, Hamilton College offers an open curriculum that gives students the freedom to shape their own liberal arts education within a research- and writing-intensive framework. Hamilton enrolls 1,850 students from 49 states and 49 countries. Additional information about the college can be found at www.hamilton.edu.
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Taneytown resident Caroline Freundel, top left, was part of a Hamilton College research team that studied how families were affected by the pandemic.