Biography

Hyang-Gi completed her doctoral degree in sociology from the State University of New York, Stony Brook in 2019 and previously received a master’s degree in social sciences from the University of Chicago.

Her current work examines mainly the diversity effect in the context of roommate influence on academic performance in higher education. Specifically, through experimental design and a survey questionnaire, she quantitatively investigates whether diversity in roommates benefits students’ academic performance. Her findings demonstrated that diversity is not a panacea for all kinds of social problems. Instead, it specifies particular areas in which diversity is effective in yielding positive impacts on academic performance.

During her Max Weber Fellowship, Hyang-Gi plans to delve further into her unique data, refining, eliminating, and validating the current findings. She also plans to expand the application of her findings to a more macro level beyond higher education for her long-term research direction in the multidisciplinary environment.

Expertise for Teaching and Mentoring of Ph.D. Researchers
Hyang-Gi has taught an undergraduate-level course on research methods for social science at the State University of New York, Stony Brook.