Jolena is a fourth-year student working towards a BA in Psychology and Creative Writing at Dalhousie University. She is a research assistant at the Language and Literacy Lab at Dalhousie under the supervision of Dr. Hélène Deacon. She has won two consecutive Undergraduate Summer Research Awards during which she has assisted with data collection and analysis at the Language and Literacy Lab. Jolena is primarily involved in a longitudinal study entitled Leaps and Bounds: From Reading Words to Understanding Texts which investigates how children’s oral language skills support reading development throughout elementary school. She is also involved in the Power of Children’s Learning in Their Reading Project. She hopes that this research facilitates better language and literacy supports for learners. Jolena is eager to further her understanding of language within the human brain and how people communication across modalities.