Counseling Graduate Student Recognized for Best Paper

June 11, 2014

COLUMBUS, Ga. — Amanda Andrews, a school counseling graduate student at Columbus State, has been recognized by the Eastern Educational Research Association as author of its 2014 Best Student Paper.

Guided by Jennifer L. Brown, assistant professor of educational foundations, Andrews presented her paper, “The Effects of Math Anxiety on Mathematical Academic Success during the Freshman Year,” at the 2014 EERA conference in Jacksonville, Fla., February. She will accept the best paper award at the 2015 EERA Conference in Sarasota, Fla.

“The topic for this project came from an interest in the psychological piece of anxiety that can be associated with math for some individuals,” said Andrews, of Columbus. “It seems that when I mention the topic to others I almost always get a response similar to, `I have math anxiety, too.’ We thought it would be insightful to research whether math anxiety could be influencing students' academic performance at our university.”

Andrews, who has a bachelor’s degree in counseling and human services from Atlanta Christian College in East Point , will begin her practicum in school counseling in the fall. Until then, she’s working as a graduate research assistant for Brown.

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