Carson Brooks (he/him) graduated from Ball State University in December 2023 with a major in  Psychological Science and minors in Counseling Psychology and Social Work at Ball State University. Carson is a Crisis Specialist for the 988 Suicide Prevention Lifeline and an intern at Muncie OUTreach, a local community youth group focusing on LGBTQ+ advocacy. Carson has been an undergraduate research assistant in Dr. Holtgraves’ Communication and Experimental Pragmatics Lab for two semesters, working on projects relating to scalar expressions, microaggressions, gendered Chat GPT response, miscommunication, and chat repair in the digital context. He presented two research studies at the Midwestern Psychological Association Conference in April 2023: “Conversational repair in the digital realm” and “Sound and fury; Linguistic analysis of microaggression and aggression tweets.” Carson now also volunteers in the Personality and Psychopathology Lab led by Dr. Lee, where he assists with data collection at the Youth Opportunity Center. This project will help serve underrepresented and marginalized populations by furthering our understanding of the validity of psychological tests. In addition to being an active student researcher, Carson has been a resident assistant for the Social Science Living-Learning Community, a teaching assistant for a Psychology of Diversity course, and a first-year social science mentor for the University College. Last year, Carson received the Dr. Robert E. Hill Scholarship and the Don T. and Geneva E. Sprague Scholarship from the Psychological Science Department at Ball State University.

In addition to continuing his work in the P2 Lab as a Post-Baccalaureate volunteer research assistant, Carson is finalizing his applications for Clinical Psychology master’s programs. In his future graduate education, Carson hopes to research risk reduction for suicidality and substance use in LGBTQ+ populations, as well as the effectiveness of positive psychology.

In his free time, Carson enjoys doing cardio workouts, eating and cooking new foods, and watching reality television.