Haley McVay

Studied the development of social behaviors, with an importance on pair bonding, in the monogamous prairie vole.

• Maintained a research colony of the monogamous prairie vole.
• Performed husbandry tasks such as breeder pair establishment/management, post-operative checkups, tagging animals, and weaning animals.
• Maintained organization of the vivarium and performed monthly audits to ensure accuracy in colony management software.
• Assisted with perfusions and brain harvesting.
• Assisted in training undergraduate researchers in animal handling, animal husbandry tasks, and manual behavioral observation scoring.
• Acted as the point of contact on a behavioral analysis project consisting of generating enough manual behavioral scoring data to train an AI model in hopes of developing an open-source, automatic software for prairie vole behavioral scoring.

Studied the development of social behaviors, with an emphasis on pair bonding, in the monogamous prairie vole.

• Lead work on a behavioral analysis scoring project (see above), which included developing an ethogram and manually scoring behavioral observation videos.
• Aided with animal husbandry tasks, such as weaning, pup checks, and post-operative checks.
• Helped with tissue processing (i.e., brain harvesting, brain slicing, and tissue mounting).

Studied language development in 3‑6 year old children. Primarily concerned with investigating word learning interventions that can help build vocabulary size early on in life.

• Completed a Senior Honor's Thesis investigating how story-related characteristics from AI-generated storybooks affected word learning outcomes in pre-school aged children.
• Performed production-based naming tasks with children and their guardians.
• Performed comprehension based pointing tasks with children and their guardians.
• Gained experience coding participant data including parent-child interactions and child success on production-based word learning tasks.

• Trained and mentored new employees to maximize team performance.
• Oversaw cash handling procedures, ensuring accuracy and proper documentation at all times.
• Completed store opening and closing procedures and balanced tills.
• Managed staff to ensure timely food delivery and order accuracy for the satisfaction of our customers.

• Took reservations and to-go orders by phone, answered customer questions, and informed of accurate wait times.
• Supported servers, food runners, and bussers with keeping dining area ready for guests.
• Answered customer questions about hours, seating, and menu information.
• Assigned guests to tables suitable for needs and restaurant section rotation.