December 2013

Administrative Updates & Announcements

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Mortensen Travel Awards of up to $500 per student per academic year are available for undergraduate psychology majors who are presenting a poster or paper at an undergraduate research conference or professional psychological conference. Awards are granted on a rolling basis until the available funds are exhausted. Information and application materials are available at http://psych.umn.edu/ugrad/mortensen/travelandresearch.html. Please encourage eligible undergraduates to apply!

New Room Scheduling System 

The University has replaced their old room scheduling system (R25) with Astra Schedule. To view room options within Elliott Hall, click here. Rooms will either have a link to Astra Schedule (which you must use to schedule that room), a link to a Google form, or contact information for a Psychology staff member who will reserve the room for you. The room scheduling page also contains a guide to using Astra Schedule. If you have questions, please contact the Central Office at psymain@umn.edu or (612) 625-2818.

Volunteer Appointments

If you plan to offer anyone a volunteer appointment within our Department, please inform Guillermo De Paz or Heidi Wolff. Due to University legality issues, completion of forms, and in some cases a background check, is required before volunteers may start work. The process – which Guillermo or Heidi will help you with – is detailed at http://cla.umn.edu/intranet/hr/VolunteerAgreements.php

Awards & Accomplishments

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Andrew Oxenham's lab is part of the Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience (ACN) network that has been selected for a second time for the European Union's Erasmus Mundus scheme – http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~acn/ – to facilitate exchanges of PhD students and postdocs between European and North American labs. The funding is designed to support stays of between 1 and 10 months in partner labs on the other side of the Atlantic.

Graduated

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Congratulations to our October 2013 Ph.D. graduates!

Jeff Jones 

Area: Quantitative/Psychometric Methods 

Advisor: Niels Waller

Dissertation Title: Fungible Weights in Logistic Regression

Visiting Scholars

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Yuthika Girme, graduate student in the School of Psychology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand has been invited by Professor Jeff Simpson to visit our Department from January 2014 - May 2014. Ms. Girme will join Professor Simpson's Social Interaction Laboratory and Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaption Laboratory.

November 2013

Administrative Updates & Announcements

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Central Office Key Request Procedure Change

The key request form is now online! Students, staff, and faculty can complete and submit the key request form via the Department of Psychology Intranet. The form can be found at here.

To use the electronic form, an x.500 is required. If anyone is requesting a key but does not have an x.500, they will need to complete a paper form. The paper forms will continue to be located in the Central Office (N218).

Supervisors Please Note: Every day the Central Office will look at the key requests submitted and email the corresponding supervisors for approval. Supervisors will only receive one email per day, so please respond promptly. If the Central Office does not receive a response within two business days, they will send another approval request.

If for any reason you will be unable to respond to the approval request emails for an extended period of time, please contact the Central Office to work out a solution.

Awards & Accomplishments

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Professor Christopher Federico in the news...

"Gov't Shutdown Science: Why Human Nature Is to Blame" Christopher Federico explains, "People are less likely to compromise and bend when they think that fundamental moral concerns are at stake." (Yahoo! News)

Congratulations to Social Psychology area graduate student Patrick Dwyer (advisor - Professor Mark Snyder) who is the recipient of a Greater Good Science Center Dissertation Research Award in the amount of $10,000 for his project, "Gratitude as Persuasion: Understanding When and Why Gratitude Expressions Facilitate and Inhibit Compliance." This Dissertation Research Award program is part of a larger project at UC Berkeley, Expanding the Science and Practice of Gratitude, funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. More information about Patrick's research can be found at here.

Graduated

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Congratulations to our September 2013 Ph.D. graduates!

Tiana Bochsler 

Area: CAB 

Advisor: Gordon Legge

Dissertation Title: Perceiving Properties of Indoor Layouts with Impaired Vision

Sandra Shallcross

Area: Counseling

Advisors: Patricia Frazier and Jeffry Simpson

Dissertation Title: Social Support Mediates the Relation between Attachment and Responses to Potentially Traumatic Events

Kara Simon

Area: I/O 

Advisor: Paul Sackett 

Dissertation Title: Team Intelligence and Team Personality Predicting Team Performance

Upcoming Events

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Office for Conflict Resolution

Departmental Cultures:
Turning Challenges into Opportunities

November 15, 2013 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
University Campus Club / Rooms A,B,C

How do we create departments that are stimulating, productive, and respectful workplaces?

Celebrating twenty years addressing faculty and staff employment concerns with respect and skill, the University's Office for Conflict Resolution presents a special program focused on practices and strategies that distinguish thriving departments. Following opening remarks by President Eric Kaler, the program offers a panel discussion and audience participation.

Representing departmental, college-wide, and central administrative perspectives, our panelists are:

• Katrice Albert, Ph.D., Vice President, Office for Equity and Diversity
• Eugene Borgida, Ph.D, Professor of Psychology & Law, former Department Chair and CLA Associate
• Dean Nancy Raymond, M.D., Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs, Medical School, and Professor of Psychiatry

Join us to learn more about practical, straightforward strategies to promote engaged, productive environments for research and teaching. Attention will be given to customizing practices for academic cultures across the University. While designed for faculty and chairs, the program is open to all and will be live streamed.

Lunch will be provided. To RSVP, please email ocr@umn.edu and inform us of any food allergy, dietary, or other special needs. Co-sponsored by the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost, the College of Liberal Arts, the Office for Equity and Diversity, the Office of Human Resources, and the Student Conflict Resolution Center.

Visiting Scholars

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Marion David, graduate student at the University of Lyon in France, has been invited by Professor Andrew Oxenham to visit our Department from December 2013 - May 2014. Ms. David will be participating collaboratively with department researchers in the areas of human auditory perception and neuroscience with particular emphasis on auditory scene analysis.        

October 2013

Awards and Accomplishments

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Professor Mark Snyder was the invited keynote speaker at the meetings of the social psychology section of the German Association of Psychology, held September 2-4, 2013 in Hagen, Germany. The title of his address was "Caring, Concern, and Community Connection: New Directions in the Study of Pro-Social Action". For media coverage (in German) of his speech, visit here:

Former graduate student Brenton W. McMenamin and Professor Chad J. Marsolek won the 2013 award for Best Article in Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience (a Psychonomic Society publication), for their paper "Can theories of visual representation help to explain asymmetries in amygdala function?"

Tiana Bochsler, a graduate student in the cognitive and brain sciences area, successfully passed her PhD oral defense on September 12th, 2013. The title of her thesis is "Perceiving Properties of Indoor Layouts with Impaired Vision". Her advisor was Gordon Legge. Her dissertation committee included Professors Koutstaal, Kersten, Legge and Yonas. Congratulations to Tiana!

Graduated

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Congratulations to our August 2013 Ph.D. graduates!

Samuel M. Hintz

Area: Counseling

Advisor: Patricia Frazier

Dissertation Title: Evaluating an Online Intervention to Increase Present Control over Stress

Reiko Hirai

Area: Counseling 

Advisors: Patricia Frazier and Moin Syed

Dissertation Title: Longitudinal Adjustment Trajectories of International Students and Their Predictors

John Smithe Kim

Area: Social 

Advisors: Jeffry Simpson and Mark Snyder

Dissertation Title: The Influence of Local Sex Ratio on Romantic Relationship Maintenance Processes

Oh Myo Kim

Area: Counseling 

Advisor: Richard Lee

Dissertation Title: Writing the Unknown: An Expressive Writing Intervention for Adopted Korean American Adults

Amanda Koch

Area: I/O

Advisor: Paul Sackett

Dissertation Title: Predicting Undergraduates' Persistence in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Fields

Stephanie Pituc

Area: Counseling 

Advisor: Richard Lee

Dissertation Title: Foreigner objectification, bicultural identity, and psychological adjustment in Asian American college students

James Porter

Area: CSPR 

Advisor: Monica Luciana

Dissertation Title: Cortical and Subcortical Correlates of Emotional Control Across Adolescent Development

Maryhope Howland Rutherford

Area: Social

Advisors: Jeffry Simpson and Traci Mann

Dissertation Title: Attention and Support Visibility in the Receipt of Social Support

Grants

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Congratulations to the following for their recently awarded grants!

Bill Iacono

National Institutes of Health

2013-2018 $3,237,730

Adult consequences of youth substance use: Twin study enriched for SUD risk

Bonnie Klimes-Dougan (2 grants)

Mayo Clinic Rochester, Marriott Foundation for People with Disabilities

2013-2014 $31,140

The Pediatric Bipolar Biobank Program

Rich Lee

Wilder Foundation, Saint Paul Promise Neighborhood Initiative

United Way SIF Grant

2013-2014 $16,000

Promise Neighborhood SIF Grant

Angus MacDonald

National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health

2013-2017 $939,577

5/5 Cognitive Neuroscience Task Reliability & Clinical Applications Consortium (renewal)

Andrew Oxenham

National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders 

2013-2018 $1,580,519

Spectro-temporal interactions in electric and acoustic processing and auditory perception

Paul Schrater

Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)

2013-2015 $98,892

Cognitive Foundations of Economic Microfoundations

David Vachon, Minnesota Center for Twin Family Research

Bob Krueger, Bill Iacono & Matt McGue - Mentors

National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse

NRSA Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Award

2013-2015 $104,733

Identifying modifiable pathways to chronic substance use

Krista Wisner, Clinical Science and Psychopathology Research Program Graduate Student

Angus MacDonald and Kelvin Lim - Mentors

National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health

National Research Service Award (NRSA)

2013-2015 $72,070

Neural Nature of Persecutory Ideation in Schizophrenia

Upcoming Events

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Department of Psychology Colloquium
Thursday, October 24, 2013
4:00 – 5:00 p.m. (followed by a short reception)
Mississippi Room, Coffman Memorial Union

Speaker: Stephen Chew, Ph.D.

Why Do Academics Do Research Like Scholars but Teach Like Dummies?

A strange discrepancy exists between how we academics typically think about research and how we think about teaching. When we conduct research, we understand the importance of reviewing the relevant literature and insist on rigorous methods and convincing evidence. When we teach, however, we often act as if there is no literature on teaching, there are no methods for evaluating teaching, and evidence doesn't really matter. Too often we are perfectly content to base our teaching on intuition, untested assumptions and little or no evidence. If we were to conduct research in the same way, we would be guilty of poor scholarship. I will argue that we should approach teaching like we approach scholarship. We should see teaching as an area of applied research, especially those of us in psychology and the social sciences. I will discuss examples of how this approach can advance teaching effectiveness and improve student learning.

About the speaker (from his website):

Stephen L. Chew received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in experimental psychology. He has been professor and chair of psychology at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama since 1993. Trained as a cognitive psychologist, one of his primary research areas is the cognitive basis of effective teaching. He is a recognized authority on teaching research, theory and practice. He has received local and national awards for the quality of his teaching. He is a leader in the scholarship of teaching and learning. His research interests include the use of examples in teaching, the tenacious misconceptions that students bring with them into the classroom, and the role of questions in learning. He regularly serves as a keynote speaker and workshop leader at conferences on teaching in general and on the teaching of psychology in particular. In 2011, Professor Chew was named the 2011 U. S. Professor of the Year for Master's Universities and Colleges by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

2014 Psychology Undergraduate Celebration
Save the Date!

Friday, May 9, 2014
4:00 - 5:30 p.m.
Campus Club, Coffman Memorial Union

Please mark your calendars and plan to attend the annual recognition celebration for psychology undergraduate students. This annual event recognizes our outstanding undergraduate achievements and graduating seniors.

Additional details and RSVP directions will follow later in the academic year.

If there are student accomplishments you believe warrant recognition at this event, please forward details (and/or any questions) to Holly Hatch-Surisook (hhatch@umn.edu). Recognitions may include co-authors on published papers.

Thank you for your support of our undergraduate students

September 2013

Administrative Updates & Announcements

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In 2013, the Clinical Science and Psychopathology Research (CSPR) area of the department (headed by Bob Krueger) applied for and was awarded accreditation by the Psychological Clinical Science Accreditation System (PCSAS). As described on the PCSAS website, "PCSAS was created to promote superior science-centered education and training in clinical psychology, to increase the quality and quantity of clinical scientists contributing to the advancement of public health, and to enhance the scientific knowledge base for mental and behavioral health care." PCSAS is an exciting new approach to accreditation that aims to advance clinical psychology as a discipline based in the scientific method. The accreditation process entailed preparation of an extensive self-study report and a rigorous review process, including a two day in person site visit. CSPR joins a small handful of first-rank doctoral programs in clinical psychology that are now accredited by PCSAS (see http://www.pcsas.org/accredited-programs.php).

Professor Gordon Legge has been appointed Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of Psychology. Although Gordon will serve as DGS for 2013-14, John Campbell will assist in the transition by providing background support as needed. Starting on 9/16/13, please address any DGS-related matters to Gordon at legge@umn.edu. Robin Peterson and Rachel Goeller will continue to assist Gordon in the day-to-day operations of the department as they relate to graduate education.

Psychology Undergraduate Advising is pleased to announce that Kayla Kelsey, who previously served as a peer advisor during her undergraduate career, has returned to their unit. She re-joined the Department in the role of Psychology Advisor in July. Following completion of her dual Honors degree (Psychology B.A., Youth Studies B.S.) in May 2012, Kayla spent a year as an Americorps volunteer at Humboldt High School, working with students on college admissions attainment. Kayla will be bringing her new perspectives on access and success for low income, first generation and underrepresented students to bear in her work with Psychology undergraduate students. Please welcome Kayla back to Elliott Hall!

Awards and Accomplishments

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Professor Gene Borgida is the 2013 recipient of the Distinguished Service Award from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI, Division 9 of APA). This well-deserved award reflects Gene's many contributions to SPSSI, including serving as its President from 2009-2010. Please join us in congratulating Gene on this wonderful acknowledgement of his generous service to the profession.

Professor Gordon Legge has been awarded the Charles F. Prentice Medal by the American Academy of Optometry (AAO). AAO is the academic and research wing of the optometry profession. The Prentice award is the highest award of AAO and recognizes lifetime achievements in vision science. A description of the award and a list of previous winners can be found here: http://www.aaopt.org/About/Prentice. Gordon will receive the award and will deliver a lecture at the awards ceremony at the AAO's annual conference in Seattle in October. Congratulations Gordon! We are very proud of this achievement.

Rachael Klein, a Ph.D. student working with Deniz Ones, had her paper recognized as the best in its stream at the Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Conference in Athens, Greece. The paper was titled, "Gender Differences in Environmentally Sustainable Behavior and its Determinants". Rachael also presented her paper, "Cognitive Predictors and Age-based Adverse Impact among Business Executives," at IPAC's annual conference as the recipient of the 2013 James C. Johnson Student Paper Competition Award.

Visiting Scholars

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Laura Mezquita Guillamon, Professor at Universit at Jaume I in Spain, has been invited by Professor Bob Krueger to visit our Department from August 2013 - December 2013. Dr. Mezquita Guillamon will be participating collaboratively with department researchers on the studies of personality, psychopathology, structural equation modeling and twin studies.

Asbjørn Nørgaard, Professor at the University of Southern Denmark, has been invited by Professor Matt McGue to visit our Department from August 2013 - July 2014. Dr. Nørgaard will be participating collaboratively with department researchers on personality, human abilities, political psychology, and behavioral genetics research.

Alper Sahin, postdoc at Cankaya University in Turkey, has been invited by Professor Dave Weiss to visit our Department from September 2013 - August 2014. Dr. Sahin will be participating collaboratively with department researchers on the implementation of the important methodology of computerized adaptive testing (CAT) to the improvement of tests used in Turkey for a wide range of applications in education, government, and industry.

Ohad Szepsenwol, postdoc at IDC Herzliya in Israel, has been invited by Professor Jeff Simpson to visit our Department from August 2013 - August 2015. Dr. Szepsenwol will be participating in research projects conducted by the Social Interaction Laboratory and as part of the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation project.