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Hi! My name is Josie Bygrave, and I am a senior Psychology major graduating Spring of 2026. I currently have a year-long fellowship with Communities in Schools of the Blue Mountain Region here in Walla Walla. I’m super excited about the work I am able to do with them and to see what comes of it next semester!

Communities in Schools (CIS) is a national organization that partners with schools on the local level in order to reduce student barriers to education. In my fellowship, I am specifically partnering with CIS of the Blue Mountain region. They are working in 15 schools throughout Walla Walla, Milton-Freewater and College Place districts to empower students to stay in school. To achieve that goal, they have a site facilitator in each school who works to provide support through a tiered system that focuses on universal (Tier I), small group (Tier II), and individualized (Tier III) interventions. 

Through a series of conversations with the CIS Blue Mountain Region Coordinator Katie DePonty, we identified their needs and how I might be able to support their program. Additionally, as a senior psychology major, an important component of my studies includes creating my thesis, which typically takes the form of a sort of study. Through these conversations, we thus discussed the possibility of combining aspects of the fellowship program with my thesis requirements. This would not only help me to maximize the impact my fellowship could have on CIS, but would also support me in developing my thesis. In the end, this became the plan!

Most psychology majors write their thesis in collaboration with one or two other peers, so this was the first thing I had to figure out. Through many conversations, Ruby Ahlvin (also a senior psychology major) and I decided to partner in our thesis and collaborate with CIS in the process. Though Katie and I knew that CIS was going to be part of my thesis, there was still the question of exactly what that would look like. Katie, Ruby and I held weekly meetings to obtain a better understanding of the goals of CIS, how it functions, what the facilitators do, and how they evaluate their program. During this process, we came to understand that while CIS’s tiered system of support is built on previous research, there seemed to be little evidence for how to run Tier II groups effectively. Therefore, we realized that our thesis would be the most beneficial to CIS if it looked at some of these specific aspects of their Tier II small group work. 

Ruby and I spent the next few weeks looking at previous research pertaining to small group interventions, attendance in schools, social emotional learning, and more. Based on the knowledge we gained from this, we discovered that there might be components of Tier II interventions that are more effective at increasing student attendance than others. This led us to finally be able to craft our research questions. 

Our first question broadly looks at whether or not student participation in Tier II groups has an effect on attendance. Our second question explores a variety of factors that might be predictors (frequency of groups, size of groups, facilitation methods) of these changes in attendance within Tier II groups. 

Next semester, Ruby and I will explore these questions by collecting data from facilitators on how they run their small groups and analyzing this with archival student data. I hope that our results are able to provide CIS with a better understanding on how their Tier II small groups are impacting students. Ideally, our results will inform them on things that they are doing well, as well as on things that they might be able to shift in order to maximize their time and resources. I can’t wait to see what our findings are next semester!