Alumni
From Arizona State University to the University of Tennessee, SART members have produced outstanding social justice-focused scholarship and matriculated to elite graduate programs and tenure-track faculty positions as well as pursued exciting careers in public and private sectors. Learn more about the lab’s alumni below.
Elena Schuch [she/her/hers] joined the lab in 2017 and graduated in 2023 after completing her internship at the VA in Madison, Wisconsin. She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology with a minor in French from the University of Florida. After college she served two years in the Peace Corps in Burkina Faso, West Africa, with an emphasis on health education (sex ed, in particular). Her research interests focus on gender and sexualities from an intersectional feminist lens. Her master’s thesis explored young women’s experiences with long-acting reversible contraception (published in Journal of Social Issues [Grzanka & Schuch, 2020]), and her dissertation involved a year-long virtual ethnography of a youth peer sex education advocacy group based in East Tennessee. She is currently a staff psychologist at the VA in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Elliot Spengler, Ph.D. [he/him] joined the lab in 2016 and graduated in 2021. He attended Butler University and Ball State University where he received his MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling prior to coming to Knoxville. His research interests include the promotion of well-being and examining processes that promote (e.g., mindfulness, help-seeking) and impede it (e.g., varying systems of oppression, mental health stigma), especially for marginalized populations. In his spare time, you can find him soaking in the surrounding natural beauty, at a music venue, traveling, or running around Knoxville. Elliot completed his internship at the University of Virginia’s Counseling and Psychological Services and is currently on a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Rochester Medical Center.
Keri A. Frantell, Ph.D. [she/her] earned her Ph.D. in counseling psychology at UT and is now a staff psychologist at the University of Utah’s counseling center. She was formerly an assistant professor at the University of North Dakota. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Psychology with a Scientist-Practitioner Emphasis from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and a master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling with an Addictions Specialization from Marquette University. Her integrated program of research, teaching, and service emphasizes group dynamics, particularly intergroup contact, intergroup dialogue, and group psychotherapy; multicultural education; sexual and gender minority physical and mental health; and suicide prevention and interventions.
Katie Fritzlen, Ph.D. [she/her] earned her Ph.D. in social psychology from UT in 2020. Originally from San Antonio, Texas, she received her bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee before attending UTK to pursue her doctorate. Her research interests revolve around implicit attitudes, with a particular focus on implicit prejudice, and her current line of research investigates how perception of an immutable similarity with a negatively-characterized outgroup affects implicit and explicit prejudice towards that group.
Elizabeth Fles, Ph.D. [she/her] has collaborated with Dr. Grzanka since 2017. Currently, Elizabeth finished her doctoral training at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville in 2019. She is now an assistant professor of psychology at University of Bridgeport in Connecticut. Her research focuses on social stigmatization, which is the process of socially discrediting a characteristic or behavior of an individual or group. Specifically, her research program is aimed at understanding how stigmatization toward minority groups shapes the self-concept, attitudes, and behaviors of dominant group members.
Candice Bain [she/her] was a founding member of SART from 2013-2014 at ASU. She was an editorial assistant for the first edition of Dr. Grzanka’s book, Intersectionality: A Foundations and Frontiers Reader (2014, Westview Press), and she conducted an integrative literature review synthesizing works from queer theory, music therapy, and feminist studies for her Honors thesis, which was ultimately published in The Arts in Psychotherapy. She is now a board-certified music therapist and a graduate clinical psychology student at the Wright Institute's Psy.D program in Berkeley, CA, aiming to work as a social justice-oriented clinician with ethnic minorities, the LGBTQ+ community, and forensic populations.
Jenn Blazer [she/her] was a member of SART (2012-2014) at ASU. She co-led an investigative study on "straight ally" identities and activisms with fellow SART member, Jake Adler. The results of the study were published as "Making Up Allies: The Identity Choreography of Straight LGBT Activism" in Sexuality Research and Social Policy. After graduating from Barrett Honors College at ASU, Jenn joined the Phoenix-based start-up company, Tuft & Needle, where she has helped the digitally native mattress company grow from 50 employees to over 150 in her time there.
Zeruiah Buchanan (She/Her) joined SART in 2016 at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK). For a year she studied LARC promotion policies through an intersectional lens. During the summer of 2016, Dr. Grzanka mentored her while she participated in the EAP Summer Research Institute. In May of 2017, She graduated with her B.A. in Africana Studies and Psychology with a minor in American Studies. Zeruiah is graduated with a Master’s in public health from UTK, as well, where she studied community health education, statistics, and epidemiology. She is excited to pursue a career in psychiatric epidemiology.
Adi Wiezel [she/her] was a founding member of SART (2010-2012) at ASU, where she worked on a variety of survey research projects, including scale development studies. She is now a Ph.D. student in social psychology at ASU, and her research interests emphasize the roles of affect, motivation, and functional specificity in areas including political attitudes, leadership, and education. Recent and current research projects examine how status motivations influence political attitudes, the structure of US political attitudes and polarization, different types of leadership preferences, and the influence of different kinds of affect on motivation and engagement in education.
Milo Boggan [they/them/theirs] joined the lab in 2016 and co-authored a qualitative study on music therapists’ reactions to a radically inclusive model of queer music therapy practice. In 2017, Milo graduated from the College Scholars program at the University of Tennessee where they received their bachelor’s in The Foundations of Music Therapy and Mental Health.
Jessica Pruett [she/her] was a member of SART (2013-2014) at ASU. She organized and conducted survey research on neoliberal attitudes with over 200 research participants. She earned her Ph.D. in Culture and Theory at UC Irvine in 2021. Her dissertation, entitled “A Woman’s Place: Popular Culture and the Afterlife of Lesbian Feminism,” examines the relationship between lesbian feminist history and contemporary popular culture. She is now a visiting assistant professor of gender studies at Lawrence University in Wisconsin.
Jake Adler [he/him] was a founding member of SART (2012-2014) at ASU. He helped conceptualize and build the original online SART Research Database and co-led an investigative study on "straight ally" identities and activisms, the results of which were published as "Making Up Allies: The Identity Choreography of Straight LGBT Activism" in Sexuality Research and Social Policy. After working as a Fulbright Scholar and Boren Fellow with the U.S. Consulate in Kolkata, India for two years, Jake completed his MFA in Creative Writing at The New School in New York City. He now worked for years in the NYC Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, where he planned and implemented policy-driven social media campaigns and conducts community outreach with local immigrant activist groups.
