Fordham psychology professor Tiffany Yip, Ph.D., the mother of two teenage students herself, said she wanted to know how much research on school start times had actually been published. So, for a paper she published in Pediatrics in May, she decided to gather as many studies as she could find and analyze the data as a whole, in addition to exploring something that many researchers hadn’t studied—the impact of delayed school start times on students from different communities, particularly children from low socioeconomic backgrounds. 

“Some research suggests that people from higher socioeconomic communities already have better sleep, due to factors like safer neighborhoods, less noise and light pollution, and more regular work hours. In addition, parents from these communities may be more likely to advocate for delays in school start times,” said Yip. “In this analysis, I wondered whether delaying school start times would continue to exacerbate these disparities between students from different socioeconomic backgrounds.”

The Importance of Sleep for Young People

The average start time for U.S. public high schools is 8 a.m. This is too early for teenagers, says the American Academy of Pediatrics. When adolescents don’t get enough sleep, they can experience several health risks, including being overweight and using drugs, as well as poor grades in school. 

“Sleep is important at all points in the developmental lifespan, but there’s a lot of focus on adolescents because sleep coincides with their biological changes. Their circadian rhythms are shifted, which means they go to bed later and naturally want to wake up later,” said Yip. “But this change in their body clocks doesn’t coincide with our current school start times.” 

Impact of Delayed Start Times  

Yip’s recently published paper offered several conclusions. Her team of researchers analyzed data from 28 studies and nearly two million study participants—mostly middle and high school students, with some elementary school children. They found that data showed that delaying school start times to between 8:30 and 9 a.m. has better developmental outcomes for young students. 

“Specifically, we found that kids sleep longer, and we also found that their negative mood was lower. Indicators of anxiety, depressive symptoms, and other negative psychological mood outcomes were lower when they had later start times,” she said.

Unfortunately, her team found that there wasn’t enough data collected on student demographics to make a well-informed conclusion on how students classified by sex, race, school size, and percent free/reduced lunch are impacted by delayed school start times. But Yip said research suggests that private school students tend to benefit more from later start times than public school students. 

“There is some sort of suggestion that kids from higher socioeconomic backgrounds will benefit more from a delay in school start times. This means that potentially, a delay can exacerbate some of the sleep disparities that we’ve seen in other research. We need more data to figure that out,” said Yip. “But we know that as parents and educators, we need to be careful about how implementing delays in school start times in higher socioeconomic communities might contribute to existing disparities in sleep health.” 

A Controversial Topic Among Students and Their Families

As students return to classrooms this fall, this topic will reenter many conversations, said Yip. Many of those discussions are intense, she said.

“This subject gets people riled up like crazy because it has huge ripple effects,” said Yip. “Parents need to get to work on time, particularly those who commute into New York City … But for kids who have a 7 a.m. start time, we have to factor in how long it takes for them to get to school. In Manhattan, some kids commute really far—sometimes an hour and a half to certain magnet schools. What time are they waking up?”

Yip has a personal opinion, too. She has two children—a middle schooler and a high schooler—whose schools started to delay their start times in the 2021-2022 academic year. The middle school changed its start time from 8 to 8:30 a.m., and the high school switched from 7:30 to 8 a.m., she said. 

“My kids are probably not representative because I already study sleep, and I’m really strict about bedtime and all this other stuff. But I do think the delayed school start times help with the chaos of the morning,” said Yip. “It’s hard to wake up super early, especially when it’s winter and it’s dark outside. I think my kids like the new policy quite a bit. I like it, too.”

It’ll take more effort for other schools to delay their start times, said Yip. After all, there are many stakeholders involved, including parents, educators, and bus drivers. But when it comes down to it, the biggest motivator will likely be the students themselves, she said. 

“Having data like this is one piece. But what’s going to really drive this is what kids are telling us,” said Yip. “If they’re saying, ‘I want to sleep in’ or ‘I feel better when I get a little bit more sleep,’ I think those sorts of things are going to really help us move the needle on school start times.”

Yip has explored the human relationship with ethnic identity in more than 50 peer-reviewed papers. Her research specifically focuses on ethnic identity development among underrepresented populations, the association between ethnic identity and psychological adjustment, and the impact of ethnic-specific and general stressors on people’s well-being. Her work on racial and ethnic identity was featured in a 2019 Fordham News Q&A.

“Dean Mast and I were determined to celebrate our senior researchers and their extraordinary work this year,” Rachel Annunziato, Ph.D., professor of psychology and associate dean for strategic initiatives at Fordham College at Rose Hill, said in an email. “I am so deeply grateful for this chance to see them and to celebrate all that they have done.”

Despite the coronavirus pandemic, more than 200 FCRH undergraduate students conducted research this semester. The school also saw a record number of travel grant submissions this spring, though the majority of them were suspended due to the pandemic. Research results were published in a commemorative program for the FCRH 13th Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium and the 10th volume of the Fordham Undergraduate Research Journal.  

More than 50 people joined the two-hour-long Zoom call, including faculty, donors, graduating seniors, and their labmates and friends. Each student presenter spoke for several minutes about their research, on topics from nonsuicidal self-injury to the relationship between Instagram use and adolescent male body image. 

“At the [in-person] research symposium, I’m going from one place to another,” Maura Mast, Ph.D., dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill, said during the Zoom session. “[But today] I was able to focus on each talk. I pulled up your abstract. I actually had my 14-year-old with me for a while—she’s very interested in many of your topics, she may follow up with you—so it was just terrific. It just reminds me of the joy of learning, and that’s what we’re all about.” 

‘A Sense of Normalcy During This Weird Time’

Lindsey Register, a communications and environmental studies double major, presented her senior thesis: “Documentaries Making a Difference: Communication Effects of Environmental Film and Television.” She surveyed roughly 90 Rose Hill students via SurveyMonkey and investigated how nature documentaries have impacted their lives. 

Register recalled the first documentary that made an impact on her life: The Cove, an Academy Award-winning film about dolphin-hunting practices in Japan. 

“It was about an issue I had never been presented with in my life,” said Register, who first watched the film in a high school science class. “It was so fascinating to me because these people were out there advocating for an issue that I had never known about … I really liked how a film was able to give me that impact of inspiration and feeling of advocacy.” 

For her senior thesis, Register also created policy recommendations for environmental education. 

“I think governments should be more involved in the funding of documentaries, in the funding of environmental education as a whole,” said Register, who is now searching for jobs that combine her two majors. “There also should be stricter policies in the screening of facts and information that are portrayed in the documentaries.” 

Shubarna Akhter, a psychology and biological sciences double major, also spoke about her senior thesis, “South Asian Mental Health Service Use: Risk and Protective Factors for Young Adults.” While working as a research assistant in the labs of two faculty members, Tiffany Yip, Ph.D., and Lindsay Till Hoyt, Ph.D., Akhter learned that many Asian Americans—especially South Asians—don’t use mental health services as frequently as other racial and ethnic groups. 

To investigate, she recruited and paid 20 students of South Asian heritage to participate in focus groups at Rose Hill and share their personal experiences, with the aid of a fall undergraduate research grant. She analyzed her data and developed risk and protective factors for using mental health services. Finally, she made predictions on how future interventions could promote mental health services among South Asians. 

“As an aspiring psychiatrist, I was able to have these important conversations with South Asian young adults in a professional setting,” said Akhter, who wants to eventually work in the Bronx with minority communities. “I learned what we can do to better improve that field that I want to go into.” 

Unlike past presentations, Akhter had no poster to show. Instead of hearing “Congratulations!” in person, she received congratulatory emojis on Zoom. But the virtual symposium was still a special experience for Akhter and her family. 

“I really felt the energy radiating from everybody, and I felt like everyone was so engaged at hearing about what I had to say,” said Akhter, who presented her project from home in the Bronx, with her parents cheering her on from the sofa across from her. “And just listening to everybody else was inspiring, and it really gave a sense of normalcy during this weird time.”

A Homemade Poster and Yoga

As a gift to the graduating seniors, Annunziato’s nine-year-old twin boys created a “Howl at the Moon” poster and showed it to the students on camera. 

“That’s a bar off of Arthur Ave that my students have told me about for years,” Annunziato explained in an email. “My sons have been very moved by what our seniors especially are going through and surprised even me with this hilarious poster that was meant to be a tribute to senior week.”

Towards the end of the Zoom call, many of the participants struck a yoga pose and took a group screenshot for Nicole Smina, a student who is training to become a yoga teacher. Smina explained that she is participating in a 14-day yoga challenge, which requires posting photos on social media. In the spirit of her practice, she wanted to post a photo of people doing yoga in a Zoom call. 

“You’re really exposing people who are in sweatpants right now,” one student joked. 

“We are such versatile researchers!” Annunziato added. 

As the event came to a close, Annunziato offered a few last words. 

“You’ve given me joy, you’ve given me laughs, and I feel like we’re still together. So, thank you,” Annunziato said, raising a glass and a toast to everyone on Zoom. “Cheers to our senior FCRH researchers.”

Her latest research looks at what happens when we face discrimination in our daily lives and whether having a strong sense of racial and ethnic identity better protects us from the effects of discrimination—or makes us feel worse.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What inspired you to research the relationship between discrimination and racial and ethnic identity?

There was a growing literature that found really negative effects of discrimination on how kids feel about themselves: their physical health, their mental health, their academic well-being. In the adult literature, discrimination is connected with things like obesity, blood pressure, breast cancer, and mortality. That literature is quite robust—meaning there’s been a lot of studies that find these very consistent effects.

So then I started putting these three pieces together: discrimination, health outcomes, and identity. If discrimination is so bad for outcomes, how might identity play a role in this? My hunch was … it’s good for kids to feel good about their racial identity. But I wanted to see where the data fell. It was really important to find the evidence and the data to support it, rather than just conjuring up ideas that made sense in our heads.  

How did your new study compare to similar research conducted in the past?

There was very mixed literature [in the past]. Some studies found that having a strong sense of ethnic identity helped buffer the effects of discrimination. And then other research found if you have a really strong sense of identity, it actually makes you feel worse. It impacts you more because it’s an important part of who you are. We were finding mixed results in our own data, too. And so that’s why we set out to do this meta-analysis.

What my students and I did is we went through all of the published research, unpublished research, dissertations, raw data that people were willing to share with us. And we came up with this meta-analysis to see once and for all, is identity good or bad for discrimination?

You and your students pored through data from 18,000 teenagers and adults across the world. After completing your meta-analysis, what did you find?

The overall take-home is that having a strong sense of ethnic identity does mitigate the effects of discrimination.

One of the main dimensions of identity that we looked at was a sense of commitment—how strongly connected you feel to your group. You know you’re a member of this group, and it’s integral to who you are. The other dimension we looked at was how active you are in exploring the meaning of your identity. You’re still thinking about it, trying to figure out the role of race and ethnicity in your identity.

What we found was that people who are sure and committed and clear about their sense of identity … that’s where you see the benefits. If you’ve decided that’s an important part of who you are, you have a toolbox for how to deal with it. One, you’ve probably dealt with it before. Two, you probably have a community of people. You can say, hey, this happened to me today. And they can say, oh, that happened to me too. Or they can help you process it. And three, just having a sense of … I know who I am. When you have clarity around it, you can say, oh, the issue isn’t about me—that’s about you.

But for people who are still not sure, it has a worse impact on them. If you are, let’s say African-American, and you’re not quite sure what that means yet, and people discriminate against you for that, it has a much worse impact because you’re not even sure how you feel about being a member of a group, and still people are treating you unfairly because of it.

Did you find any differences among racial groups?

Yes. Having a strong sense of commitment to your identity was actually stronger for Latinx than for Asian American individuals. We can speculate, but we don’t really know why that is. These processes and dynamics are so different for various groups in the United States and even abroad just because their histories and social positioning are so different. Immigration histories, language, acculturation—all of that.

How can we encourage people, especially children and adolescents, to embrace their racial and ethnic identity?

Research on racial socialization with families—how parents talk to their kids about race—suggests that parents who instill feelings of pride in their racial and ethnic group can help kids develop a sense of identity, which would then help buffer discrimination. There’s also some research looking at peer socialization. So how do peers talk to kids about their race and identity? Having those messages, either from friend groups or parents or maybe even the media, can encourage students to embrace diversity, individuality, and differences across racial and ethnic groups.

So it seems like it really starts at home, with parents fostering a sense of pride in their children.

I also think community matters. For example, if your parents are telling you it’s great to be Latinx and you go to school with kids where there are no people like you, or you live in a neighborhood where there are no other Latinx families, that message only goes so far.

I think children are more impacted by their parents at a younger age. But once they move into middle and high school, I think peers have a much stronger socializing effect.

Schiaffino joined the Fordham faculty in 1989 after earning her doctorate in social/personality psychology from the City University of New York. She received tenure and was promoted to associate professor in 1996. From 2008 through 2014, she served as chair of the department.

“She was a real advocate for the department and faculty,” said Ann Higgins-D’Alessandro, Ph.D., a longtime friend and professor of psychology at the University. “She ran the department effectively and smoothly. But she also invested time and energy into university-wide projects.”

Barry Rosenfeld, Ph.D., chair of the psychology department, described Schiaffino as a beloved instructor, who was also a highly respected research mentor at the Rose Hill campus.

“The volume of students that turned to her for dissertation mentorship was extraordinary, and I don’t ever recall her turning one away,” he said.

One of the professor’s mentees, Lisa DeBellis, Ph.D., FCRH ’05, GSAS ’14, said that, even as an undergraduate student, she’d looked up to Schiaffino.

“She always encouraged me to strive for great things, and I am so grateful that I was lucky enough to know her,” she said. “She was one of the reasons I wanted to become a psychologist, because she made her job look like so much fun. I will remember and miss her always.”

During her time at Fordham, Schiaffino, a resident of Hopewell Junction, New York, taught a number of psychology courses, including social psychology, health psychology, and psychological research methodology. Her research was broadly focused on chronic illnesses such as multiple sclerosis and arthritis, and more specifically on illness representations and the impact that these representations had on adjustment and changes in one’s identity.

Tiffany Yip, Ph.D., director of Fordham’s Applied Developmental Psychology program, called Schiaffino a “smart, insightful, fair, and caring” leader with a “wicked sense of humor.” Yip, who worked closely with Schiaffino when she served as the department’s chair, said she appreciated Schiaffino’s wisdom and “balanced and thoughtful leadership.”

“She had a natural warmth that put people at ease, yet just underneath [that], she had no problems voicing her opinion if she thought something was not right,” she said.

“I am better for having known Kathy and am thankful that our paths crossed.”

Lindsay Till Hoyt, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology, recalled Schiaffino’s welcoming demeanor when she first interviewed for a teaching position at Fordham in 2015. Schiaffino was wearing jeans and sneakers and greeted her with a warm smile, which made her feel more comfortable, she said.

“I could tell right away that she had an easy and casual nature,” she said. “Yet, at the same time, she was fiercely dedicated to her work and her students.”

A memorial was held for Schiaffino at the McHoul Funeral Home in Fishkill, New York, on May 19.

Schiaffino is survived by her husband, son, daughter, sister and three grandchildren.

The $400,000 developmental grant is a supplement to an existing grant that focuses on discrimination and sleep patterns of African-American and Latino adolescents. With the new funding from the National Institutes of Health, Yip hopes to include the experiences of Chinese students.

“There has been a lot of research on discrimination among young African Americans and Latinos, but there isn’t much research on Asian-American teens,” said Yip, who directs the Applied Developmental Psychology Program at Fordham.

According to the limited research that does exist, Asian youth report levels of discrimination that are similar to, if not greater than, those experienced by African-American and Latino teens.

Yip is particularly interested in how discrimination among racial and ethnic teens affects sleeping patterns and health since “sleep is so important for the foundation and development of one’s memory over time.”

24-Hour Monitoring

Once a year, ninth-grade students chosen for the two-year study will wear wristwatches for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for two-week periods. They will complete surveys on their daily interactions, emotions, and school activities every evening.

“Think of the watches as more high-tech, data-capturing Fitbits,” said Yip.

She anticipates stronger physical effects, rather than psychological, for the Asian students, such as headaches, stomachaches, loss of appetite, and other physical expressions of stress. That is because research suggests that rather than verbalizing emotions, Asians/Asian Americans are more likely to express their feelings in somatic ways. Therefore, while their levels of depression and anxiety may seem unaffected by discrimination, “we may see stronger effects on sleep and other physical health outcomes,” she said.

“The idea is that if kids experience discrimination in school, they may think less well when they are doing homework that evening,” said Yip. “Over time, discrimination and disturbed sleeping habits may affect focus, and students start to underperform.”

“The social, cultural, and historical context of Asian-American teens is very different from African-American and Latino teens,” said Yip, adding that there are more variables to consider, such as immigration status and cultural relationships.

Yip said it was a more difficult process to make a case for studying Asian-American teens, acknowledging the stereotype that Asian Americans have higher performance and academic readiness.

 A Rising Ethnic Group

But for Yip, who is Asian American, the study is critical at this time because Asian Americans are the fastest growing ethnic group in the nation.

She hopes that her findings will encourage further global conversations on how to mitigate the effects of discrimination.

“If we find that someone calling you a name makes you sleep poorly at night, it really speaks to the whole connection between the social experiences we have and what happens in our body and to our health.”

-Angie Chen, FCLC ’11

Tiffany Yip, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology, grew up in many different places—some more ethnically diverse than others.

Born in the United States to Chinese immigrants, Yip spent part of her youth in California, Texas, Illinois and Hong Kong. With the exception of Hong Kong, she was often one of very few Asians in her school.

Needless to say, Yip’s ethnic identity wasn’t always easy for her to understand.

“During that important time in my life, when I was trying to form a sense of self, I was going from a place that didn’t have a lot of Asians to a predominantly Asian place and thinking, ‘What does that mean for who I am?’” she said.

Yip’s childhood questions about race and ethnicity have led her to study ethnic identity in Chinese-American teenagers and young adults in the New York City area.

Ethnic identity is the extent to which someone’s ethnic background plays a role in his or her self definition. “It’s a complex sense of self, and yet few studies have examined whether feelings of ethnic identity fluctuate over time,” Yip said. “I wanted to know how and when ethnic identity is most salient [for these young Chinese Americans]and about the psychological implications of that identity.”

Yip recruited 100 first- and second-generation Chinese-American students from 16 New York City-area high schools to complete daily diaries for two weeks. The diaries contained checklists on feelings and behaviors, including those relevant to ethnic identity. Students also were asked to rate how they felt about their ethnic pride and psychological well-being.

She found two significant trends. Feeling “Chinese” made the adolescents feel good about themselves, but only if they considered their ethnic identity central to who they are. She also found that the adolescents’ sense of identity increased as they participated in ethnic activities. For example, the more they spoke Chinese or participated in ethnic events, the more Chinese they felt.

“A lot of it has to do with parenting,” Yip said of the results. “Some parents raise their kids in a way that is all about their national origin; they have to speak the language, read Chinese magazines, eat Chinese food and watch Chinese television. And some parents are much more about assimilating [to U.S. culture].”

Yip also pointed to the neighborhoods of Chinese-American teenagers as contributing to ethnic identity. “Are there opportunities to have a Chinese meal or read a Chinese newspaper where they are growing up?” she said.

Yip said that someone’s social environment—such as friends who encourage diversity—also play a factor. “If you’re the only minority in a context, you might not be comfortable exploring your identity or you may feel ashamed of it, or feel like an outcast,” she said.

Though Yip was able to confirm that ethnic salience and psychological well-being can change daily, she wanted to go further. “I wanted to see if it changes within a particular day,” she said. “Indeed, it does.”

Yip collected experience sampling reports several times a day for one week from first- and second-generation Chinese-American college students whom she outfitted with PDAs. The devices beeped randomly six times a day and asked the students questions about their ethnic salience, their psychological well-being and the situation they were in at the time.

“The phenomenon we were trying to tap was, ‘When do people think about their identity?’” Yip said. “If you’re with your family, for example, is your identity heightened? How about when you’re in the classroom—is it not as salient for you?”

She found that if a college student was with his or her family or with peers, or Chinese was being spoken, ethnic salience was at its highest. But that’s not surprising, she said, since the Chinese language is more likely to be spoken in settings that include more Chinese people.

“The main finding from the PDA study is that you can put two individuals in the same objective environment, but they’ll see different things depending on their ethnic identity,” Yip said.

In other words, Yip found that ethnic identity can serve as a lens for interpreting the world. “So if people have a heightened sense of ethnic identity, they are more likely to pick up on cues in their environment that are relevant to their identity. But people who are like, ‘I’m Chinese, but it doesn’t really mean that much to me; I don’t really think about it that much,’ might not pick up on those same cues in the same environment.”