features
spring 2024
By Andrea Grant
Illustration by Vivian Mineker
What helps people push through dark times? Why do some thrive despite challenging circumstances or trauma, while others struggle?
Suffolk Psychology Professor Mary Beth Medvide is hard at work studying the positive catalyst that can, she believes, make a real difference.
“What I’m interested in is what gives people hope,” says Medvide. “I study how our relationships and the organizations we’re a part of support that hope: building it, maintaining it, and helping us pass it on to others.”
Rather than something fleeting and fragile—as poet Emily Dickinson famously described it, “the thing with feathers”—hope can be measured and intentionally cultivated, Medvide says. “One of the ways we define hope psychologically is that hope represents the pathways and agency that help you to achieve a goal.”
For years, Medvide has conducted quantitative and qualitative studies with students in two area high schools within the nationwide Cristo Rey Network, which offer students from low-income and marginalized communities mentoring and work-based learning programs. Her research points to a direct correlation between that support, the development of hope, and positive outcomes for students as they move into young adulthood.
Internships and job training provide hard and soft skills as well as a sense of accomplishment and pride. Connecting with academic and career mentors, Medvide says, can be life-changing. “There’s great power in seeing other people succeed,” says Medvide, because it inspires hope that you can succeed as well. “Mentoring relationships can open up ideas for new possibilities and a different sense of what the future could be.”
While imparting hope and practical skills does lead to greater success in the classroom, the ultimate goal, Medvide says, is much broader: Helping students establish rewarding lives free from the stress and anxiety many faced growing up.
Not only does this conscious cultivation of hope support the upward mobility of low-income students of color, it also benefits other young people contending with mental health challenges, particularly as they deal with the lingering impacts of the pandemic.
“COVID created a sense of isolation and collective trauma that we went through, and hope is a way of combating that,” says Medvide. “Now that we’re able to go back to work-based learning and to nurturing those mentoring relationships, we are able to build that hope for the future.”
Medvide is working on a book, due out next year, that will look at the role hope plays in healing from historical traumas, fostering critical consciousness, and advocating for change.
And what makes her so hopeful?
She recalls working with one student who was failing his classes and spiraling into despair. It took the encouragement of a supportive teacher to coax him into taking a single positive step. But as he started to turn his grades around, he began pushing harder and harder. It’s something Medvide says she sees time and again in her work.
“Once you start to build that momentum, once you have that hope, it can take some of the pressure off. It can lift that burden.”
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“I study how our relationships and the organizations we’re a part of support hope: building it, maintaining it, and helping us pass it on to others.”
Suffolk University Psychology Professor Mary Beth Medvide
—Professor Mary Beth Medvide
What helps people push through dark times? Why do some thrive despite challenging circumstances or trauma, while others struggle?
Suffolk Psychology Professor Mary Beth Medvide is hard at work studying the positive catalyst that can, she believes, make a real difference.
“What I’m interested in is what gives people hope,” says Medvide. “I study how our relationships and the organizations we’re a part of support that hope: building it, maintaining it, and helping us pass it on to others.”
Rather than something fleeting and fragile—as poet Emily Dickinson famously described it, “the thing with feathers”—hope can be measured and intentionally cultivated, Medvide says. “One of the ways we define hope psychologically is that hope represents the pathways and agency that help you to achieve a goal.”
For years, Medvide has conducted quantitative and qualitative studies with students in two area high schools within the nationwide Cristo Rey Network, which offer students from low-income and marginalized communities mentoring and work-based learning programs. Her research points to a direct correlation between that support, the development of hope, and positive outcomes for students as they move into young adulthood.
Internships and job training provide hard and soft skills as well as a sense of accomplishment and pride. Connecting with academic and career mentors, Medvide says, can be life-changing. “There’s great power in seeing other people succeed,” says Medvide, because it inspires hope that you can succeed as well. “Mentoring relationships can open up ideas for new possibilities and a different sense of what the future could be.”
While imparting hope and practical skills does lead to greater success in the classroom, the ultimate goal, Medvide says, is much broader: Helping students establish rewarding lives free from the stress and anxiety many faced growing up.
Not only does this conscious cultivation of hope support the upward mobility of low-income students of color, it also benefits other young people contending with mental health challenges, particularly as they deal with the lingering impacts of the pandemic.“
COVID created a sense of isolation and collective trauma that we went through, and hope is a way of combating that,” says Medvide. “Now that we’re able to go back to work-based learning and to nurturing those mentoring relationships, we are able to build that hope for the future.”
Medvide is working on a book, due out next year, that will look at the role hope plays in healing from historical traumas, fostering critical consciousness, and advocating for change.
And what makes her so hopeful?
She recalls working with one student who was failing his classes and spiraling into despair. It took the encouragement of a supportive teacher to coax him into taking a single positive step. But as he started to turn his grades around, he began pushing harder and harder. It’s something Medvide says she sees time and again in her work.
“Once you start to build that momentum, once you have that hope, it can take some of the pressure off. It can lift that burden.”