Chloe Mazer, like her Scholar peers, spent years dedicated to the completion of her honors thesis project. She delivered a viable proposal, developed a command of scholastic work related to her topic, and made her own contribution to that scholarship. Then, when the time came, she submitted her work alongside other undergraduate theses to be considered for a significant award.
On May 5, 2022, one day before the Schreyer Medals Ceremony and two days before Penn State graduation, she received the Robert F. Guentter Jr. Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Award. Her work, “A Mixed Method Review of Cognitive Decline in the Older Incarcerated Adult Population,” earned her $1,250 as the grand prize recipient.
Scholar alumna Ava Self ’21 was named first runner-up and graduating Scholar Edward Spagnuolo was the second runner-up.
Mazer explained that the genesis for her thesis came during her second year thanks to “a biobehavioral health ethics class where I was tasked to write a series of three papers.”
While she didn’t specifically cover cognitive decline or dementia among the older prison population in those papers, Mazer, who minored in gerontology, developed a keen interest in issues affecting that group.
“As I started to dig into the research, I just saw a lot of things that made me sad and uncomfortable with the way that older incarcerated individuals are treated,” she said. “And a personal experience with dementia came from my grandmother’s dementia diagnosis.”
With the seed planted, Mazer began looking for resources to support her work. She first turned to Linda Wray, associate professor of biobehavioral health. She approached Wray to gauge her interest in a directed study on aging and health disparities.
“While I’m a gerontologist by training, it was over the course of the spring semester in 2020 when Chloe started talking about being interested in older incarcerated adults,” Wray said. “That topic was totally outside my area of expertise, so we asked Dr. Loeb to do a guest lecture on health and aging in older incarcerated adults.”
Dr. Loeb is Susan Loeb, professor of nursing and department of medicine, who, after her guest lecture, stayed on with Wray as a co-supervisor for Mazer’s thesis project.
“The fact that her interest area was so spot-on aligned with mine, I just couldn’t say no,” Loeb said. “It was a really rewarding experience. Chloe took control and was in charge of the ‘ship’ while we mentored her in the research process. We all brought different strengths to the table, and it was fabulous.”
With guidance from Loeb and Wray, Mazer determined that a mixed-method review was the best fit for her body of research and went to work. Along the way, she learned about making matrix tables and article selection trees. She discovered methods and measurements used to diagnose cognitive decline along with biological mechanisms underpinning the condition.
In her Robert F. Guentter Jr. Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Award presentation, Mazer shared her findings, processes, and methods and answered questions from the audience. All told, the eight-person award jury chose her work as the most outstanding among the three finalists. The committee chair, Benzak Business Librarian, and head of the Schreyer Business Library, Diane Zabel, detailed what elevated Mazer’s thesis to grand prize status.
“Her research project was rigorous and well designed, and she did an excellent job of providing background and context for the reader,” she said. “Chloe’s systematic review of the literature on cognitive functioning in incarcerated older adults has the potential to inform researchers, practitioners, and policymakers on this timely and important topic.”
Mazer, who describes herself as passionate about public health and developing health intervention programs and campaigns, shares the vision that her thesis can have a real-world impact on healthcare for older incarcerated adults living with cognitive decline.
“My hope is that future research can build upon what’s working, adopt [best practices] from nursing homes and directly apply it to the prison setting,” she said. “Better interventions [are needed] in the future because this problem is probably only going to get worse.”
