{"id":74942,"date":"2013-03-29T08:22:01","date_gmt":"2013-03-29T12:22:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=74942"},"modified":"2023-06-27T13:13:14","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T17:13:14","slug":"class-of-2013-addison-zhao-future-educational-psychologist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2013\/03\/class-of-2013-addison-zhao-future-educational-psychologist\/","title":{"rendered":"Class of 2013: Addison Zhao, Future Educational Psychologist"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article is part of a series featuring some of this year\u2019s outstanding graduating students, nominated by their academic school or college or another University program in which they participated. Check for additional profiles of students in the Class of 2013<\/a> on UConn Today from now through Commencement.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Addison<\/a>
Addison Zhao ’13 (CLAS). (Peter Morenus\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the cold winter weather, it\u2019s easy to spot Addison Zhao. The senior psychology major from Baltic, Conn., sports an earflap hat with moose antlers protruding from each side.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt makes people smile,\u201d Zhao says.<\/p>\n

Zhao\u2019s outgoing personality and his interest in psychology have made him stand out as a dedicated supplemental instruction leader for psychology professor David Miller\u2019s general psychology course.<\/p>\n

The supplemental lessons offer an opportunity for students to reinforce the key points from a lecture class in a smaller, informal environment. Zhao has been constructing lesson plans and writing quizzes and practice exams for students since the beginning of the Fall 2012 semester.<\/p>\n

\u201cAddison cares a lot about other students learning the material,\u201d says Miller, associate head of the psychology department and Zhao\u2019s academic advisor. \u201cHe goes beyond the call of duty to make sure that\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zhao says he finds provoking questions and encouraging discussions contribute to meaningful note-taking skills.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel that students really like structure,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve made my classes more straightforward by writing on the board, giving quizzes, and going over the quizzes with a question-and-answer session at the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miller says Zhao\u2019s lessons have proven successful, because students attending his supplemental lessons are scoring higher than average on exams.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is good at being conscientious, and wants to make sure the students are learning,\u201d says Miller. \u201cHe isn\u2019t just going through the motions, he\u2019s doing what\u2019s effective.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to his work as a supplemental leader, Zhao has been a research assistant since his second semester at UConn. He\u2019s currently collecting data for his own research on what makes online dating profiles attractive, which he will write up for his senior Honors thesis. Although he can\u2019t share his results yet, he is excited to see the results unfold.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like seeing the participants interact,\u201d says Zhao. \u201cI love seeing participants, who are usually complete strangers, actually react to the experiment.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his senior year of high school, Zhao thought becoming an engineer would be more practical and fiscally responsible.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout a week into my freshman year at UConn, I opened up my calculus textbook and I was just like, this is not the direction I want to go,\u201d says Zhao. \u201cIn psychology you learn so many different things about human behavior and how people act. I don\u2019t see how people can place a monetary value on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

After being a supplemental instructor, Zhao is becoming more interested in educational psychology.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to get a Ph.D. in social psychology and teach it,\u201d says Zhao. \u201cBut now that I\u2019ve been teaching, I\u2019m becoming more interested in how people learn. So now I\u2019m thinking about getting a Ph.D. in educational psychology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Outside of the classroom, Zhao has been an active member of the UConn community, serving as a freshmen orientation leader; as president of Psi Chi, the honors psychology society; and as a participant in the Office of Community Outreach\u2019s 2011 Alternative Spring Break program in Atlanta, Ga. And his diverse achievements have earned him the respect of his professors, not least of all Miller.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve taught over 2,500 students,\u201d says Miller. \u201cHe\u2019s just one of the most amazing students I\u2019ve ever had.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Psychology senior Addison Zhao has excelled as both a student and a peer educator. Now he hopes to study educational psychology in graduate school.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":74768,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2373,2234],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[117],"class_list":["post-74942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psychological-sciences","category-university-life"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 07:55:03","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74942"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75171,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74942\/revisions\/75171"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/74768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74942"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=74942"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=74942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}