 As a Visiting Scholar at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2004, Shelly was awarded a National Institutes of Health National Research Service Award to conduct research on women's body objectification.She designed a programmatic investigation of body objectification using diverse but complementary methodologies (e.g., quantitative survey, experimental designs, meta-analysis) to demonstrate that the objectification of women's bodies is deeply embedded in socio-cultural world views and intersects with race/ethnicity.She was mentored in feminist psychology by Dr. Janet Hyde.