Commencement Profile: Samantha E. Stanford

SUNY Chancellor’s Award For Student Excellence

Samantha Stanford has earned a bachelor of arts in psychology, attaining a 3.90 GPA while minoring in sociology.

Stanford will receive the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence during the 1:00 ap.m. baccalaureate ceremony at Buffalo State’s 146th Commencement, Saturday, May 19, in the Sports Arena.  

Stanford has been a prolific researcher during her time at Buffalo State, centering her studies on parenting-related risk factors in young children. She completed a senior-year honors thesis on the association between prenatal cigarette and marijuana exposure and the regulatory processes among kindergartners. She was granted an Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship in 2017 to conduct research on addictions at the University at Buffalo’s Research Institute on Addictions, where she continues to work. She was also awarded two grants from the Buffalo State College Small Grants Program to conduct an independent study on the effects of raising a virtual child through the application MyVirtualChild and a Psi Chi group research project on the association between emotional intelligence and academic performance among college students.

A member of the college’s Muriel A. Howard Honors Program, she has been inducted into the Psi Chi International Psychology Honor Society, the Alpha Kappa Delta International Sociology Honor Society, and the Alpha Lambda Delta Honor Society. She is also a member of the inaugural class of Hulicka Scholars, a Buffalo State program designed to prepare top students for careers in psychology. As acknowledged by these awards, her scholarship is exceptional.

On campus, Stanford has served as a student success associate and a peer mentor for the college’s COMPASS Program and has volunteered with the Anne Frank Project and Bengals Dare to Care Day activities. She was also a member of the college’s rugby team during her freshman year.

In the community, she interns as a research clinical assistant at the Institute for Autism Research, where she combines research and clinical work to help children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder, and has volunteered as a Sunday school teacher and director of plays at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church.