Major: psychology
McKenna is a research assistant in the Canine Cognition and Human Interaction Lab and a standout team player on many projects, including our Dog Obedience study. Here, we aim to pinpoint dog and human characteristics that predict dog performance in an obedience class run by Prairie Skies dog training. During obedience classes, she helps graduate student London Wolff collect saliva samples from dogs, which are later analyzed for stress levels by Dr. Jessica Calvi in the Center for Brain, Biology and Behavior's Salivary Bioscience Lab.
McKenna got involved with CCHIL in its early days after hearing that Dr. Stevens was starting up a dog lab. When we asked McKenna what she likes about working in the lab, she said that “working in the lab nicely intertwines my two longstanding interests of psychology and animal behavior and allows me to gain hands-on learning experience.”
