Administrative Updates & Announcements
We are pleased to welcome Assistant Professor Nate Helwig
to the Quantitative/Psychometric Methods area of our Department! Nate
comes to us from the University of Illinois's Department of Statistics.
He will be splitting his time between the Department of Psychology and
the School of Statistics (Psychology will serve as his tenure home). In
Elliott Hall, he can be reached at N650 (office), N612 (lab),
612-624-8363, or helwig@umn.edu. Please help us welcome Nate to the Department!
Staff member Amanda Suchy has been reassigned to administratively support the Department's CSPR and PIB programs full time (PIB support has switched from Margie Pickering to Amanda). Amanda previously split her time between the CSPR program and the Central Office. She will continue to be involved with the Central Office, as a backup when needed. Amanda will be located within CSPR's main office (in office N438E) and can be reached at (612) 625-2546 or amsuchy@umn.edu.
The Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) provides grants of up to $1,700 for undergraduates either to work with a faculty member on her/his scholarly or creative project or to carry out a project of the student's own design in close collaboration with a faculty sponsor. UROP projects are an ideal way to bring together the University's research and teaching missions, and the program is well funded, providing over 100 grants for CLA students every year, including numerous projects sponsored by Psychology faculty members. Students submit their electronic application at www.urop.umn.edu. The due date for UROP applications for spring 2015 projects is October 6, 2014. Wendy Nicholson-Kotas serves as a resource for CLA students and faculty who have questions about the UROP program. She can be reached at nicho421@umn.edu or 612-624-4368. Questions? Holly Hatch-Surisook.
Awards & Accomplishments
Emeritus Professor Tom Bouchard's award-winning twin research continues to make the news. His research was discussed in an article on livescience.com titled "Twins Separated at Birth Reveal Staggering Influence of Genetics", which was featured at Yahoo! News this month.
Assistant Professor Chun Wang received two
significant awards during the summer months. In May she was selected to
be a National Academy of Education Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow for the
2014-2015 academic year. With the generous support of the Spencer
Foundation, the Academy created this program to encourage outstanding
researchers at the postdoctoral level to pursue critical education
research projects. The program provides her with a full teaching
release for the 2014-2015 academic year to pursue her research program
on the development of IRT models and methods for longitudinal
measurement. Dr. Wang's second award resulted from an international
competition sponsored by the International Association for Computerized
Adaptive Testing (IACAT). As a result of that competition, she was
selected to receive the Early Career Researcher Award, which will be
presented to her at the IACAT conference in early October, where she
will present a plenary address on her research on identifying
statistically significant intraindividual multivariate change.
Graduated
Congratulations to our July 2014 Ph.D. graduate!
Jennifer Ann Fillo
Area: Social
Advisor: Jeff Simpson and Alex Rothman
Dissertation Title: Examining the Nature, Origins,
and Health Consequences of Attachment-Related Individual Differences in
the Emotion Regulation Process
Visiting Scholars
Song Chang, graduate student in the
School of Psychology at South China Normal University, has been invited
by Professor Sheng He to visit our Department from September 2014 -
September 2015. Ms. Chang will join Professor He's Vision and Attention
Laboratory with her research focused on investigating the contents of
visual imagery based on fMRI activities in the visual cortex.
