Dina Naji Arch is a second-year doctoral student in the Department of Education with an emphasis in quantitative methods in the social sciences under the guidance of Dr. Karen Nylund-Gibson. She earned her B.S. in Psychology from UC San Diego and minored in Business. She later received her M.A. in Psychological Research, focusing in quantitative methods, from California State University, Fullerton. Her current research interests include latent variable analyses and data visualization methods. Currently, she serves as the Statistics Support Peer for GGSE students for the 2020-2021 academic year.
GGSE: How have you been spending time during the campus shutdown?
Arch: Spending time with husband and two cats in Tucson, AZ. I wouldn’t be a true cat owner without taking an opportunity to post a picture of them, so here they are:
We temporarily moved to Tucson, AZ from Long Beach, CA for my husband’s work, and it’s nice to be able to (safely) explore a new state via hiking. We visited the Grand Canyon, Flagstaff, Sedona, and other hiking areas. We didn’t know we were big hikers until the lockdown. When we’re not hiking, the four of us are big couch potatoes. We love watching new TV series, and our favorites have been The Queen’s Gambit and The Haunting of Bly Manor. We also play League of Legends with our friends and family (and get mad at each other when the other doesn’t carry).
GGSE: What drew you to your area of study?
Arch: Actually, I began my graduate career in a clinical psychology master’s program. During my second semester of the program, I took a required multivariate statistics course. I liked it so much that I dropped out of the clinical program and switched to the experimental one to focus in quantitative methodology. Since there are many applied researchers and few quantitative methodologists in the social sciences, I wanted to contribute to the field by learning how to analyze applied data properly. My master’s thesis was on comparing two types of latent class analyses, and I found myself citing Dr. Karen Nylund-Gibson multiple times. At the time, my advisor suggested I apply to work with her, and that’s how I ended up doing my doctoral studies at UCSB with Karen!
GGSE: Who, living or dead, do you most admire?
Arch: Right now, our healthcare workers (including my husband, who has been working in and out of the COVID units in both Long Beach and Tucson since the beginning of this pandemic). They have been (and still are) working tirelessly to help us get through these difficult times, and I greatly appreciate and admire all of their hard work and long nights at the hospital, many of them not able to see their families for long periods of time.
GGSE: If you could live anywhere, where and why?
Arch: Two places I have visited and would return to immediately are Greece and Japan. If I had to choose, it would be Japan. I loved the culture, people, and most importantly, the food. I loved the city life, and, at the same time, I loved that I could hop on a train to explore all the parks and nature the country had to offer. I hope to be able to visit again when it is safe to do so.