This month is our back to school theme, and we want to share Dr. Meihua Qian's story. Dr. Qian is currently employed by Clemson University as an Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology. Dr. Qian has been working and innovating in the field of educational psychology for nearly nine years. Her research focus on creativity, gifted education and statistical modeling, specifically for children, and her outstanding achievements in the field have been recognized internationally.

It is difficult to measure creative personality in such a difficult age as in adolescence. Current tests include a battery of direct questions that adolescents have to answer about themselves. Obviously, these answers are not objective and the results of the test may not be accurate, because teenagers want to look good when giving their answers and may not always be honest. Even if they are honest they may be overestimating their skills. Dr. Qian created a different scientific instrument to measure adolescents' creative personality based on testing over 1300 Chinese adolescents. Since her research was published in 2010, it has gained world-wide attention. The most commonly held belief was that creative or gifted children are usually gifted in one or few close fields (such as mathematics and physics, but not mathematics and arts). Currently schools focus on domain specificity, targeting resources for children and young adults towards creativity and gifted education in a couple of narrow domains such as mathematics and literature.

However, Dr. Qian's research discovered that people can be creative in multiple domains, which has great implications for improving the current gifted education curriculum in K-12 settings. Her research showed that a variety of resources should be made available in schools so that children can explore and fulfill their creative potential in different areas and different subjects in order to fulfill their true potential.  We hope that Dr. Qian's research findings will be implemented by the educational system in the U.S. in order to help our next generation of children and students reach their full potential.