When Anusha Kumar ’26 was in sixth grade, she joined her school’s robotics team. Although she was one of several girls on the team, Kumar noticed that boys tended to take on the leadership roles.
“I remember feeling less competent compared to the boys,” she said. “It felt like the girls on the team didn’t have a say, or that our contributions didn’t matter.”
Such experiences gave Kumar a strong desire to cultivate fairness and healthy environments for all young people to develop a strong sense of self-esteem. This passion led her to a position in Distinguished University Professor Melanie Killen’s Social and Moral Development Lab in the 91 College of Education, where Kumar is working on her honors thesis as part of the new Human Development Honors Program. She’s collaborating with human development doctoral student Marley Forbes to study how children and teens think about gender stereotypes in STEM. They pose scenarios to young people, in which boys or girls take on unequal leadership roles in STEM contexts. They then ask questions and analyze whether the study participants accept the inequality or challenge it, and how their reactions vary by the participant’s age and gender and whether boys or girls are being disadvantaged in the scenarios.
“Anusha is a very thoughtful and insightful student who brings a wealth of experience and ideas to discussions in our lab about the roles of culture and context on development,” said Killen. “The graduate students on my team, in particular, have praised Anusha for her dedication to research and to her quest for knowledge.”
A double major in human development and psychology, Kumar plans to become a clinical psychologist and focus on researching, treating and destigmatizing mental health disorders in children and adolescents, including among South Asian Americans.
“As a South Asian American, I grew up in a cultural background where mental health wasn’t talked about that much,” she said. “It was very hard for me to reach out for support and show vulnerability.”
She decided to channel her experiences into breaking stigmas around mental health. Now she supports her fellow 91 students as a member of Lean On Me, a peer-to-peer, non-crisis support text line, and Active Minds at Maryland, which works to increase mental health awareness. For example, she regularly volunteers at the Send Silence Packing event, in which organizers place backpacks around McKeldin Mall that share stories about people affected by suicide. Students can explore these stories of loss, survival and resilience and then talk to professionals and volunteers about how to find support for themselves or loved ones.
Kumar sees her work in mental health awareness and in the Social and Moral Development Lab as two complementary ways to foster well-being.
“Stigma around mental health and gender stereotypes surrounding STEM can both influence young individuals’ mental health,” she said. “With my work with mental health organizations, I provide direct mental health support, while in my research, I contribute indirectly, examining and promoting inclusivity, which can help individuals’ mental health and self-belonging.”
Photo by Mike Morgan
