Samantha Dean joined the ORSP pre-award team as a pre-award coordinator on June 1. She provides critical support for a range of pre-award and reporting functions. Photo by Angela Foster.
When Samantha Dean crossed the stage at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s May commencement, she did so after building a graduate school experience rooted in psychology, research and a growing sense of where her career was headed.
Soon after earning her master’s degree in psychological studies, Dean moved into a full-time role as a pre-award coordinator in UTC’s Office of Research and Sponsored Programs.
Dean’s interest in psychology and cognitive studies started as a teenager and carried over into her college experience.
“I’ve always been a really empathetic person,” said Dean, a native of Manassas, Virginia. “Starting in high school, one of the only classes I ever really enjoyed was psychology. Then, in my undergraduate studies, I took as many psychology courses as I could before they told me I had maxed out the number of courses I could take.
“My goal was always to go do something in clinical psychology, like a therapist or psychologist. It could still be a goal one day, but right now I’m more focused on furthering my career.”
Dean decided to move to Tennessee for college. After completing her undergraduate studies at the University of the South in Sewanee, she decided to pursue her postgraduate studies at UTC in fall 2024.
“I just loved Tennessee,” Dean said when explaining what brought her to UTC. “I looked at schools in Tennessee and UTC had a really good master’s program for psychology. They had really good faculty relationships and opportunities if you wanted to go further. That’s why I’m here.”
At UTC, Dean’s academic work increasingly intersected with research. This February, she presented her master’s research, titled “Anxiety or Advantage: Detecting Malingered Symptoms in College Students Seeking Academic Accommodations.”
“I was looking at whether students could fake anxiety successfully, and if they are faking anxiety, would we be able to detect it?” Dean said. “I used a symptom report and cognitive tasks. For a symptom report, they did a series of different cognitive tasks, and essentially, I had three different groups. My malingered groups were explicitly instructed to perform as if they thought somebody with anxiety would.
“So I just compared how [the malingered groups] performed to the people who had actual anxiety who came in and completed my study,” she continued. “What I found was that students who fake anxiety tend to do so on an extreme level. Most people who were told to fake anxiety were really exaggerating the symptoms in terms of trying to respond slower, maybe missing a bunch of responses, and that’s not really what we saw with the people who actually have anxiety. They can perform almost perfectly on those types of cognitive assessments.”
Although the project was successful, Dean admitted that her study also brought out some of her own anxiety.
“My defense went really well; I was the first person from my cohort to defend my thesis,” she said. “Which was a little nerve-wracking, but I passed.”
Dean spent the academic year as a graduate assistant with ORSP. Several weeks after commencement, she joined the office full-time as a pre-award coordinator.
Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research Meredith Perry served as Dean’s supervisor over the last year, and was one of her biggest supporters.
Perry said Dean consistently stood out for both the quality of her work and her problem-solving ability.
“Samantha is pretty quiet, but she is sharp as a tack. She is brilliant,” Perry said. “We have never given her an assignment that she struggled with. She handles reports that need extensive cleaning and updates to make them usable for the campus, and she does a great job. She has a great attention to detail, but also the ability to see the big picture, and that combination of skills is really, really valuable in research administration.”
When a position in ORSP became available, Dean was a natural fit for the role.
“No matter what you ask of her, she always jumps on it,” Perry explained. “She can jump on there and usually turn around something better than what you even anticipated or hoped for. So, that problem-solving capability and the willingness to try, even in the absence of every step laid out before you, I think, really resonates with me and has always impressed me.
Though she once imagined a future as a therapist, her time at UTC helped her see another direction—one that blends psychology, analysis and research support.
“During this program, I kind of realized I like the numbers side more than I do the research side,” Dean said. “I think I just realized that there’s a lot more I would be good at and other areas I think I would enjoy more than just being a therapist.
“I grew up always focusing on other people and how they’re feeling and whatever, so now I’ve kind of transitioned into what I want, what I would actually enjoy, and what would make me happy going forward.”
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UTC Office of Research and Sponsored Programs
Samantha Dean worked as a graduate assistant for ORSP while pursuing a master’s degree in psychological science.
