As an undergraduate, Shantai conducted a Senior and McNair thesis that examined how skin color informed dating preferences among Black men on college campuses. Her thesis also explored how skin color preferences are formed and how they evolve over one’s lifecourse. Previously, Shantai was a research assistant at Syracuse University’s Memory Modeling Laboratory. Her research interests include close relationships, youth schooling and popular culture, development, attachment, race and ethnicity, social issues, and identity formation.