Wednesday, July 1, 2015

July 2015

Administrative Updates & Announcements


We are happy to announce that we have hired Yvette Massey, Executive Assistant to the Chair.
Yvette will start in the department tomorrow, July 8, 2015Yvette is a former university employee, who worked as an Office Manager in the office of the Dean at the Carlson School of Management and as an Executive Assistant to the Chair of Medicine. More recently, Yvette worked as a contractor at different organizations such as Det-Tronics, The Minneapolis Foundation, and the Valspar Corporation among others. Yvette has BA in Communication Studies, College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota.

 
There has been a recent change in getting access to the data security and privacy/HIPPA training modules.  Anyone with a UM x.500 account  -  including undergraduates  -  can now create a ULearn account and register themselves for the training modules. To create a ULearn account students need to go to the registration page and input their information. To register for the training modules, they must identify the required courses and request them.

There are three modules all Psychology faculty, staff and students who work with department data (deidentified or not) need to take.
-  Data Security in Your Job
-  Securing Your Computer Workstation
-  Using University Data.

The fourth module all people working in a Psychology research lab should take is
-  Managing Health Data Securely.

If a volunteer in your lab does not have a UM x500, please contact psyit@umn.edu and request a sponsored account for them. For any further questions feel free to contact us at psyit@umn.edu.

Awards & Accomplishments


Professor Pat Frazier  has been selected to receive the Charlotte Striebel Equity Award from the University of Minnesota. The award  "... annually recognizes a University of Minnesota faculty or staff member of any gender who goes above and beyond daily responsibilities to promote access for the common good, to undo bias and discrimination, or to build capacity for diverse and equitable campus communities" (this description is from the Women's Center website: https://diversity.umn.edu/women/charlottestriebel). Congratulations to Pat on this well-deserved honor!

Graduate Student Anne Zhou (Counseling Psychology) and her teammates from Child Clinical Psychology and Public Health - collectively called Gopher Gold - won the Sloboda and Bukoski Cup at the annual Society for Prevention Research conference in DC. They presented on longitudinal data from the World Health Organization that examined the effects of Mexico's rollout of national health insurance. They beat out perennial powerhouse Penn State and it's the 2nd year in a row that a Minnesota team captured the Cup. Impressively, the entire team consisted of first-year graduate students. They were mentored by faculty in Psychology (Richard Lee), Family Social Science (Gerry August) and Public Health (Darin Erickson).

The following graduate students were awarded the Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships for the 2015-2016 academic year. The Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (DDF) gives the University’s most accomplished PhD candidates an opportunity to devote full-time effort to an outstanding research project by providing time to finalize and write a dissertation during the fellowship year. The award includes a stipend of $23,000 for the academic year (September-May), tuition for up to 14 thesis credits each semester (fall & spring), and subsidized health insurance through the Graduate Assistant Health Plan. Congratulations to the recipients from the Department of Psychology!


Allison Farrell
Behavioral, Affective, Cognitive, and Physiological Consequences of Power in Relationships
Advisors: Jeffry Simpson and Alexander Rothman

Yingchen He
Optimizing A Protocol for Reading Rehabilitation in Age-related Macular Degeneration
Advisors: Gordon Legge and Sheng He

Juraj Mesik
Learning to Adapt in the Early Visual System
Advisors: Stephen Engel and Sheng He

Shani Ofrat
Familial Transmission of Externalizing Psychopathology
Advisor: Robert Krueger

Michael Wilmot
A Comprehensive Review of Five Factor Model Meta-Analyses in the Behavioral Sciences
Advisor: Deniz Ones

Research Opportunities

The Center for Personalized Prevention Research at the Institute for Translational Research (ITR) in Children's Mental Health is looking for graduate students and upper-level undergraduates who want to be involved in a NIDA funded research project. Briefly this project aims to investigate genetic, physiological, and personality predictors of response to substance use prevention programs for adolescents.

They are looking for graduate students interested in data collection and analysis beginning in early fall. This is a great opportunity to learn biological approaches to behavioral research as well as get connected with the new cutting-edge ITR facility. There may be opportunities for your own specific lines of research as well as publications. Please contact Eric Thibodeau (thibo018@umn.edu) if interested!

Monday, June 1, 2015

June 2015

Administrative Updates & Announcements



Students who are looking for Research Assistant positions for summer or fall have entered information about themselves, such as interests, availability, courses taken, and GPA, in the Available RA Database.  If you are looking for an undergraduate research assistant, you can request a copy of the database and browse for someone with the right qualifications.  Faculty and graduate students can request the most recent updated version of the database from Mark Stellmack (stell006@umn.edu).

Awards & Accomplishments


Emeritus Professor Bruce Overmier is this year's winner of the D. O. Hebb Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. Bruce was selected from among seven nominees. Bruce will be presented with the award at the APA convention and will deliver the Hebb lecture. The meeting will be held in Toronto, Canada from August 6-9.  

Here is more information about the award: The D. O. Hebb Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award honors a psychologist who has made distinguished theoretical or empirical contributions to basic research in behavioral neuroscience and/or comparative psychology. The candidate does not have to be a member of Division 6, but is expected to present the D. O. Hebb Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award Lecture at the 2015 APA Convention.   

Congratulations to Bruce on this well-deserved honor!

Professor Pat Frazier has been selected to receive the Charlotte Striebel Equity Award from the University of Minnesota. The award  "... annually recognizes a University of Minnesota faculty or staff member of any gender who goes above and beyond daily responsibilities to promote access for the common good, to undo bias and discrimination, or to build capacity for diverse and equitable campus communities" (this description is from the Women's Center website: https://diversity.umn.edu/women/charlottestriebel).

Professor Traci Mann was featured on ABCnews.com to discuss aspects of her new book “Secrets from the Eating Lab”. The video, titled “New Dieting Book Calls Will Power the Enemy”, highlights strategies from Traci’s book on successful healthy weight loss. The video can be found here.

Assistant Professor Moin Syed, who works in our Counseling Psychology area, has just been awarded an Arthur "Red" Motley Exemplary Teaching Award for 2014-15. Moin received inspirational letters from his current and former students in support of his nomination for the award. We are enormously proud of his achievements as a teacher and mentor.

Graduate student Andrea Miller (Social Psychology program, advised by Gene Borgida and Chris Federico) has won the Burton Award for Legal Writing. This is a prestigious award that Andrea has received for a law review paper that brings social psychology to the area of family responsibility discrimination law. Details are below. Congratulations to Andrea on this achievement!

Department of Psychology Alumni member, Donald Eggerth (PhD '97), was awarded the Dorothy Booz Black Award for Outstanding Achievement in Counseling Health Psychology by Division 17 of the American Psychological Association. The Booz Black award is given to encourage and reward outstanding research and practice in counseling health psychology. Dr. Eggerth was nominated and awarded the Booz Black for his contributions in research and practice of counseling health psychology with a focus on health-related processes and outcomes.

Andrew Tix (PhD ’02), who is also Department of Psychology Alumni, was honored last spring with the “Distinguished Faculty Award” from the graduating students of Normandale Community College. This Spring, he was named an “Outstanding Educator” by the Minnesota State Colleges and University system in recognition of exceptional commitment to teaching, continuous professional development, and service to students, his college, profession, and system.