‘We are really helping understudied individuals’

When psychology major Danny Fredette ’26 first learned of clinical psychology doctoral student Aimee Chan’s research project on Asian-American adoptees and their therapeutic experiences, he felt an immediate connection.

“This project was very salient to me, and the rest of the student researchers in the group, because we relate to it identity-wise,” says Fredette, who is an Asian American adoptee himself and is one of several students on Chan’s research team.

Chan’s project is the foundation of Fredette’s capstone, “Research in Community,” which he completed last semester. He last presented at the Spring 2024 ClarkFEST, and hopes to be able to present the project again in the near future.

Chan’s research team of undergraduate psychology students has gained a greater understanding of how the Asian American community reacts to life changes and personal development, including their transition to college and experiences with therapy. Fredette says that the study recruited participants from Asian student unions, who were contacted via an official study Instagram.

His research has consisted largely of Zoom and in-person interviews with Asian American undergraduate students, who are adoptees, as they adjusted to and navigated college life. He has analyzed these interviews for identity-formation patterns within the group.

“One of the major conclusions of the study is this idea of a space of liminality, or being caught in between the Asian American identity and their adoptee identity, and how it causes distress and conflict within personal identity,” Fredette says. “This deals with the standard instances of racism that Asian Americans experience, even though their identity is more rooted in western ideals and traditions due to their adoption status.”

Another significant finding, Fredette says, was the marked difficulty some adoptees experience when navigating typical life issues while also grappling with self-discovery.

“When I presented at ClarkFEST, several people came up and discussed how the poster affected them and how it made them feel represented,” Fredette says. “It seems that [Chan’s research group is] really helping understudied individuals.”

Fredette’s main motivation for assisting with this research? To understand how a particular group of people responds to therapy and how they are affected by external factors and events, such as, in the case of Chan’s research, the challenges and rewards of college.

“This research is so interesting to me because it gives us the chance to learn how to move forward in a better way and help people,” Fredette says. He believes that studying how Asian American adoptees like himself respond to therapy is a step in the right direction and will help make therapeutic practices for a community he cares deeply about both more accessible and better understood.

Outside the classroom, Fredette is an avid photographer who is minoring in entrepreneurship and innovation. He plans to merge his interests to pursue a graduate degree in business psychology.

Much of his photography centers around portraits of his fellow Clarkies, which he believes keeps him connected to the campus.

“I think the people at Clark are what make it feel like home,” says Fredette, who has sold his portraits at the Clark Pop-Up markets held every Wednesday at Red Square. “That’s why I do anything I do. I just like doing things that make me feel like I’m helping somebody or making people happy.

“I also use photography to build connections and network with people to open doors for myself in my other interests as well.”

Fredette says the most important lesson he’s learned in all of his adventures is just to keep moving.

“You always have to be able to pivot in life,” he says. “If you get stuck on a roadblock, no matter what you’re doing, you just have to move around it.”