More Than Headaches: Fall Honors Course Addresses Wide-Ranging Effects of Stress

More than 80% of U.S. college students cite education as their primary source of stress, according to the American Psychological Association. The reasons given include all the usual suspects — demanding coursework, grades, financial concerns, family pressures and the challenges that accompany adapting to new environments. This fall, an Honors College Signature Seminar titled Stress & Its Consequences will allow students to learn from studies on the physical and mental effects of stress with a goal of connecting scientific findings to real-world contexts. 

The class will also highlight emerging research on resilience and the biological pathways that allow some individuals to thrive under pressure. Course discussion will include both effective and maladaptive coping strategies, as well as the activities one should, and should not, undertake while stressed. Students will leave with practical tools for navigating stress more effectively and with a deeper appreciation of the science behind everyday experiences. 

Taught by Grant Shields, assistant professor of psychological science, the class explores a range of acute and chronic effects—from hormone disruption and inflammation to changes in cognition and behavior—that can result from exposure to stressors. Students will examine sensitive periods across the lifespan and explore why chronic stress is linked to shorter life expectancy.  

Given the range of articles and news coverage we see about stress in today's media, it might seem that the basic definition of stress has been fairly well settled. But as Shields explains, there are different schools of thought within the research community, stemming from the challenges of comparing humans to animal research subjects.  

"Some definitions focus on the biological, and others are more subjective," Shields said. "If it's a subjective definition, we are faced with the fact that we can't definitively say that a non-human animal is stressed because we can't ask it how it's feeling. But if our definition is more biological, where does that come from in the first place? How do we know that it's stress affecting the subject without having some understanding of stress? Depending upon who you talk to, some folks lean more on one side or the other." 

What we now call stress or stress biology was originally modeled by a Canadian endocrinologist named Hans Selye, Shields shared. Selye's research revealed that a variety of different aversive experiences experienced by different animals elicited the same kinds of biological responses across subjects. His findings led to the naming of what is referred to as General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS).   

"Eventually, GAS morphed into the concept of stress," Shields explained. "People began looking at the specific characteristics of situations that would elicit this physiological response and the subjective experience of it as well." 

Interdisciplinary courses like the Honors Signature Seminars provide students with an ideal environment to learn about topics as wide-ranging and multi-faceted as stress, because everyone in the room will bring their own experiences to the discussions.  

"One of my favorite parts of this research is the unique perspectives I gain from talking with people both within and outside my field," Shields said. "I'm really looking forward to the class for that reason; I always learn something from my students." 

Students must apply to take an Honors College Signature Seminar, a three-hour course taught by top faculty. Some seminars may also fulfill degree requirements. Two Signature Seminars are offered for fall 2026, the other being How History Shapes Business: Past, Present, Future. The deadline to apply for both seminars is March 12 at 5 p.m. 

Grant Shields is an assistant professor of psychological science whose research investigates why cognitive clarity fluctuates from day to day. He studies executive control processes and episodic memory, focusing on how contextual factors—both external (e.g., encountering a stressor) and internal (e.g., altered glucocorticoid levels, anxiety)—shape these cognitive functions and the neurobiological mechanisms underlying those effects. Much of his work has examined the impact of experimentally induced acute stress on executive control and memory. To address these questions, he employs multiple methods, including computational cognitive modeling, hormone assays and fMRI. 

Shields was named a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science in 2023 and received the Dirk Hellhammer Distinguished Young Investigator Award from the International Society for Psychoneuroendocrinology in 2024. 

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