Awards & Accomplishments

Professor Mark Snyder, McKnight Presidential Chair in Psychology, and his research on self-monitoring and social chameleons are featured in the article "Catch Us If You Can" in the online science magazine "Nautilus".  Here is a link to the article.

Professor Richard Lee will serve as Chair-Elect from 2017-2019 and then serve as Chair of the Society for Research on Child Development Asian Caucus from 2019-2021. Professor Lee is one of the ten founding members of the Caucus which began in 2005 and was formally launched as part of SRCD in 2007.

Professor Richard Lee was also part of a CLA-MPR panel discussion on ways to move beyond stigma in mental health with MPR News host Tom Weber. The discussion can be listened to here.

Professor Angus MacDonald, faculty in CSPR, PIB/BP and CAB, begins this month (January) as the Incoming Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. The Journal is APA’s flagship for psychopathology research. Professor MacDonald will have overall responsibility for the editorial board and the direction of the journal during this momentous time for psychopathology.

Mary Panos (Social Psychology Doctoral Student) was named a 2016 recipient of a 2016 APA Dissertation Research Award.

Jillian Fish (Counseling Psychology Doctoral Student) was an honoree at the American Indian Student Cultural Center's annual Honoring American Indian Women's Reception for her outstanding work in Native American communities.

Administrative Updates & Announcements

We are pleased to welcome a new staff member to our Central Office – Siobhan Swiderski. Siobhan is replacing Marina McCuskey, who is now working with the Chair’s Office. Stop by when you can, and help us welcome Siobhan to the Department!

Awards & Accomplishments

As part of the "Give to the Max 2016" campaign, Professor Mark Snyder, McKnight Presidential Chair in Psychology, was interviewed for Access Minnesota (a program aired on radio stations across the state) on the psychology of giving and volunteering. Here’s a link to the interview.

Professor Bob Krueger was named a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher, 2016, in the field of Psychiatry/Psychology. "A Guide to Data Analysis in R Commander", by Viann Nguyen-Feng and Mark A. Stellmack is available for free at stellmack.psych.umn.edu. R Commander is a point-and-click interface to the R programming language that is comparable in functionality to SPSS. This guide provides instructions for downloading and installing R Commander and for performing basic statistical analyses. It is aimed at those who have completed an introductory statistics course, but it is intended to serve as a general-purpose reference for those looking to quickly navigate the quirks of R Commander.

Graduated

Congratulations to our recent Department of Psychology Ph. D graduate!

Joseph Vitriol
Area: Social
Advisors: Mark Snyder and Eugene Borgida
Dissertation: The (In)egalitarian Self: On the Motivated Rejection of Implicit Racial Bias

Awards & Accomplishments

Professor of Psychology and Law, Eugene Borgida, and Richard Zweigenhaft, Guilford College professor of psychology, co-edited a book titled ”Collaboration in Psychological Science: Behind the Scenes.” In addition to the Introduction and Conclusion that he and his co-author wrote, Borgida is the author of one of the chapters, “It takes a village: Interdisciplinary research collaboration in political psychology.” Thirty-five psychologists, who have collaborated extensively with a wide range of scholars from multiple disciplines over the course of their careers, wrote the other 20 chapters. The essays explore the many benefits of collaborating, as well as the pitfalls that can lead to difficult or even nightmare collaborative experiences. Best practices for collaborative scholarship are identified and discussed. Peter Salovey, the president of Yale University, wrote the foreward to the book, which has been published by Worth Publishers (a division of Macmillan Learning).

Emeritus Professor, Gloria Leon, was featured in an article in the Minnesota Daily. The article focuses on her studies of groups of people in isolation to gauge the compatibility of astronaut teams. The article can be found here.

Graduate Student Jeremy Harper received a Travel Award from the Society for Research in Psychopathology at the 2016 conference in Baltimore, Maryland, for his poster presentation titled "Testing the effects of adolescent alcohol use on adult conflict-related theta dynamics.” This work was conducted with Regents Professor Bill Iacono and Steve Malone.

Ashley Wright, a post-baccalaureate lab coordinator supervised by CSPR Graduate student Sam Cooper and Associate Professor Shmuel Lissek won a poster award at this years Society of Psychophysiological Research (SPR) conference, held here in Minneapolis, for a poster titled “High Trait Fear is Associated with Over-generalization and Impaired Inhibition of Classically Conditioned Fear.”

Graduated

Congratulations to our recent Department of Psychology Ph. D graduates!

Ian Ramsay
Area: CSPR Advisor:
Angus MacDonald
Dissertation: Neural Impact of Cognitive Remediation for Schizophrenia in a Randomized Controlled Trial

Lovey Walker
Area: Counseling
Advisors: Moin Syed and Richard Lee
Dissertation: Processes of Identity Integration: An Examination of Sports & Ethnic Identities

Grants

Regents Professor Matt McGue was awarded a 5-year continuation of a R01 grant that was originally awarded in 1992 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The continuation is in the amount of 3.1 million dollars, in order to continue a prospective cotwin control study on adolescent drinking and midlife outcomes.

Professor Richard Lee is part of an interdisciplinary team that was awarded one of the University's Grand Challenge Research Grants.

The proposed project - Reminders for Readiness (R4R) – is to develop, pilot and study the implementation and initial impact of a universally available, low cost, personalized e- communication (text-messaging) system to support parents in promoting their children’s healthy development. The immediate objectives are to 1) establish strong partnerships with communities and stakeholders; 2) lay the parent recruitment infrastructure necessary to launch a sustainable system; 3) develop and launch relevant, culturally-responsive content for general messaging and text tailored to individual child needs; and 4) analyze the implementation of the partnerships, e- communication system, and pilot messaging to evaluate this partnership approach and the impact of this platform on infants and toddlers (0 – 3 years old), and their parents. We propose to start with messaging about well-child visits, immunizations, screening and service-venue use - outcomes that can be readily assessed, allowing a test of the utility of the service.

Administrative Updates & Announcements

Missy Jones has accepted the position of Assistant to the Chair in the Department of Psychology, replacing Yvette Massey (and formerly Orbe Stricherz). Missy will be dividing her time between S248 (mornings) and the Chair's office (N210) in the afternoons.

Awards and Accomplishments

Professor Traci Mann has been awarded the 2016 SPSP Book Prize for “Secrets from the Eating Lab.” This prize, given by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, honors a book written by a psychologist that makes “a distinctive and important contribution to the field by promoting an understanding of the science of social and personality psychology to the general public.”

Professor Bob Krueger was recently recognized with the 2017 Paul Hoch Award from the American Psychopathological Association (APPA). The APPA describes this award as follows: "The Paul Hoch award is given to a distinguished and currently active investigator who has produced significant, generative research in the area being highlighted at the meeting. The award is accompanied by the Hoch Award Address."

Professor Krueger was also elected to Fellow Status in the Society for Personality Assessment (SPA). This election recognizes distinguished contributions to research and teaching in personality assessment.

Emerita Professor Jo-Ida C. Hansen received the Society of Counseling Psychology Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring Award. The Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring Award acknowledges career contributions to Counseling Psychology via excellence in mentoring. This award is for professionals who have provided mentoring throughout their careers. Dr. Hansen was presented the award at the 2016 APA Annual Convention in Denver, CO.

A paper by graduate student Zara Wright (coauthors Shandell Pahlen and Robert Krueger) was selected by the Society for Personality Assessment to receive the 2017 Mary S. Cerney Memorial Award for outstanding student paper on personality assessment. The manuscript is entitled "Genetic and Environmental Influences on DSM-5 Maladaptive Personality Traits and their Connections with Normative Personality Traits"

Graduated

Congratulations to our recent Department of Psychology Ph. D graduates!

Nayla Hamdi
Area: CSPR
Advisor: William Iacono
Dissertation: Effects of Youth Cannabis Use on Young Adult Functioning

Kelli Howard
Area: Counseling
Advisor: Patricia Frazier
Dissertation: The Design and Evaluation of an Online Classroom-Based Emotion Regulation Intervention for College Students

Joyce Lee
Area: Counseling
Advisor: Richard Lee
Dissertation: Coping with Racial/Ethnic Discrimination: The Role of Color-Blind Racial Ideology among Asian Americans

John Myers
Area: Social
Advisor: Jeff Simpson
Dissertation: Keeping Your Friends Close: The Influence of Socioeconomic Status, Residential Stability, and Economic Uncertainty on Interpersonal Orientation

Brian Van Meurs Area: CSPR Advisor: Shmuel Lissek Dissertation: Neurocircuitry of Generalization of Avoidance Behavior following Pavlovian Conditioning in Adults with High and Low Trait Anxiety

Grants

Professor Krueger (PI) recently received a 5-year subcontract to lead a project on gene expression in a national sample, in the context of a U-19 award from the NIA that funds the Midlife in the U.S. (MIDUS) project.

Professors Krueger (PI), Roisman (MPI; from the ICD) and McGue (Co-I) recently received a 5-year R-01 from the National Institute on Aging (total costs 2.9 million dollars) to study the joint influence of personality and relationships on health outcomes in aging twins.

Visiting Scholars

Dr. Andrew Oxenham's Auditory Perception and Cognition lab is pleased to welcome Dr. Sara Madsen from the Technical University of Denmark as a visiting scholar this fall. Dr. Madsen will be collaborating with Dr. Oxenham and colleagues on topics related to pitch perception and auditory scene analysis.

Awards & Accomplishments

Emeritus Professor Bruce Overmier, along with his co-author Robert Murison, had their paper “Restoring psychology’s role in peptic ulcer” selected as the recipient of the 2016 George A. Miller Award for an Outstanding Recent Article on General Psychology. Both authors will be invited to present an address based on their paper at next year's APA Convention in Washington.

Professor Deniz S. Ones was named a Fellow of Division 8 of the American Psychology Association - the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP). SPSP fellowship signifies SPSP members with longstanding contribution to the field of Personality and Social Psychology.

Graduate Student Jack Kostal in our Industrial/Organizational Psychology area (Deniz S. Ones & Nathan R. Kuncel, co-advisors), was awarded the prestigious 2016 Meredith P. Crawford Fellowship in I/O Psychology from the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO); each year, the $12,000 fellowship is awarded to one dissertation-stage I/O psychology doctoral candidate nation-wide who demonstrates exceptional research skills.

Graduate Students Brenton Wiernik & Jack Kostal in our Industrial/Organizational Psychology area (Deniz S. Ones & John P. Campbell and Deniz S. Ones & Nathan R. Kuncel, co-advisors, respectively), have received the Best Student Paper Award from the Midwest Academy of Management for their paper “Demographic Differences in Protean, Boundaryless, and Exploratory Career Orientations: A Comprehensive Meta-Analysis” The paper will be showcased during the annual meeting of the Midwest Academy of Management in Fargo, North Dakota Oct. 6 - Oct. 8.

Graduated

Congratulations to our recent Department of Psychology Ph. D graduates!

Allison Farrell
Area: Social
Advisors: Jeff Simpson & Alex Rothman
Dissertation: Behavioral, affective, cognitive, and physiological consequences of relational power during conflict

Leah Feuerstahler
Area: QPM
Advisor: Niels Waller
Dissertation: Exploring Alternate Latent Trait Metrics with the Filtered Monotonic Polynomial IRT Model

Grants

Associate Professor Shmuel Lissek was awarded a 5-year R01 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health in the amount of 2.1 million dollars to study the transdiagnostic relevance of neural mechanisms by which Pavlovian generalization of fear transfers to maladaptive generalized avoidance.

August 2016 Data News

Awards & Accomplishments

Andrea Miller (PhD, JD) completed her 2015-16 post-doctoral research fellowship at the American Bar Foundation in Chicago, and has accepted a 3-year Visiting Assistant Professor position in Psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Andrea was co-advised by Professors Eugene Borgida and Chris Federico.

Lauren Mitchell, a graduate student in the PIB area, has won the Mixed Methods Interdisciplinary Graduate Group Scholarship to help support her dissertation work.

Graduate student Joe Vitriol, of our Social psychology area, has accepted a post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Psychology at Lehigh University for 2016-2018, where he will be working with Dominc Packer and Gordon Moskowitz. Joe is co-advised by Professors Eugene Borgida and Mark Snyder.

Mindy Westlund Schreiner, a graduate student of our CSPR area, received a Distinguished Contribution Award for her poster titled "Heightened Amygdala-Insula Connectivity at Rest Corresponds to Rejection Sensitivity in Adolescents with Self-Injury".

Grants

Assistant Professor Chun Wang, along with Gongjun Xu from the School of Statistics, received a two-year grant ($195K) from the Institute of Educational Sciences (IES) to conduct a methodological study entitled "Methods for Addressing Measurement Error Issues in Longitudinal Educational Studies".

Visiting Scholars

Professor Koichi Oda from Tokyo Woman's Christian University is visiting during the summer as part of his sabbatical leave. He is hosted by Professor Gordon Legge. Koichi and Gordon will be working together to update the Japanese version of the MNREAD reading acuity test for an iPad app.

Awards & Accomplishments

The Department's Diversity Committee received the Joan Adlous Diversity and Public Engagement grant of $5000 to host a Diversity in Psychological Science colloquium series for 2016-2017.

Professor Gene Borgida, along with Richard L. Zweigenhaft of Guilford College, had their book titled “Collaboration in Psychological Science Behind the Scenes” recently published by Worth Publishers. The book includes insights from leading collaborative researchers.

Karla Wang and Shamni Uthayasoorian, undergraduate psychology majors, Counseling Psychology graduate students Majel Baker and Viann Nguyen-Feng, and their faculty advisor Pat Frazier received a Poster Merit Award for their recent poster at the annual meeting of the Minnesota Psychological Association. The title of the poster was "Do Emotional Stability, Social Support, or Self Esteem Buffer the Effects of Childhood Emotional Abuse on Depression?"

Professor Fang Fang, a former graduate of our department, has been selected to receive the 2016 Young Investigator Award (Basic Science) by the International Union of Psychological Science (IUPsyS) on 25 July 2016 during the forthcoming 31st International Congress of Psychology (ICP2016) in Yokohama, Japan. As a student, Fang Fang was advised by Professors Sheng He, Daniel Kersten, and Gordon Legge. He is currently the Chair of the Department of Psychology at Peking University, the Director of the Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, and the Executive Associate Director of the IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research.

Graduated

Congratulations to our recent Department of Psychology Ph. D graduate!
Dustin R. Meriwether
Area: CAB
Advisors: Wilma Koutstaal and Randy Fletcher Dissertation: Sequential Difficulty Effects on Task Performance: Pervasive, Persistent, and Protean

Administrative Updates & Announcements

Department of Psychology staff member, Missy Jones, has taken the role of interim Executive Assistant to the Chair, while the Chair’s Office continues the search to fill the open position.

The Department is happy to welcome Nou Yin, the new member of the PsyIT team. Nou has experience in IT support working in clinics at Hennepin County Medical Center and elsewhere. Nou has certifications in CompTIA A+, CompTIA Network+, and CompTIA Security+. Nou lives in St. Paul, has three children, and provides volunteer tech support in her community. Stop by Elliott N211 to say hello!

Awards & Accomplishments

Assistant Professor Bonnie Klimes-Dougan had her paper identified as one of the top 10 most downloaded JCCAP papers in 2016. Congrats Bonnie! Klimes-Dougan, B., & Garber, J. (2016). Regulatory control and depression in adolescents: Findings from neuroimaging and neuropsychological research. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 45(1), 1-5. doi: 0.1080/15374416.2015.1123637

Our former colleague, Travis Thompson, together with Roy Pickens (formerly in the U of MN Psychiatry Department), received the Peter Dews Award from the Association of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. This award, conferred at the 40th annual Behavioral Pharmacology Conference in San Diego in early April, was based on their seminal book, Behavioral Pharmacology, as well as Professor Thompson's early work on drug self-administration and successes in the training program at Minnesota. It is always nice to hear about these successes among our department alumni!

Graduated

Congratulations to our recent Department of Psychology Ph. D graduates! Chelsea E. Jenson Area: I/O Advisor: Paul Sackett Dissertation: Is Workplace Coaching a Generic or Goal Specific Intervention? An Examination of Predictors of Goal Progress in Workplace Coaching Engagements

Upcoming Events

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.

Friday, May 6th, 2016
4:00pm - 6:00pm at the Campus Club,
Coffman Memorial Union

Those recognized will include:

Spring 2016 Degree Applicants; Mortensen Scholarship & Award recipients; Select CLA, University and National Scholarship recipients; Outstanding achievement in the Major Project: The Sharon Borine Award; 2015-16 UROP recipients; Donor Awards for Psychology Undergraduate Engagement recipients; and 2015-16 Psi Chi Inductees

Please forward any questions to Mike Houlahan, mhoulaha@umn.edu.
Faculty and Staff, please RSVP via our web form here.

Thank you for your support of our undergraduate students!

Administrative Updates & Announcements

We regret to announce that Executive Assistant to the Chair, Yvette Massey, and our Information Technology Specialist, Kao Yang, have decided to leave the department. They both had their last day during the week of March 14th. The Chair’s Office is currently in the process of filling both positions.

Awards & Accomplishments

Professor Paul Schrater had his research featured in an article on the Scientific American website. The article is titled “Why We Love the Games That Enrage Us Most: The psychology of intrinsic motivation and ‘hard fun’ could improve education and, naturally, the next generation of video games”. The article can be found here. Four of our Graduate Students in the Department of Psychology were awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship by the National Science Foundation for their research. The fellowship program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and in STEM education. The GRFP provides three years of support for the graduate education of individuals who have demonstrated their potential for significant research achievements in STEM and STEM education.

Congratulations on your great work!

Rafael Aguilera
Jessica Bair
Majel Baker
Ummul-Kiram Kathawalla

Upcoming Events

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.

Friday, May 6th, 2016
4:00pm - 6:00pm at the Campus Club,
Coffman Memorial Union

Those recognized will include:

Spring 2016 Degree Applicants; Mortensen Scholarship & Award recipients; Select CLA, University and National Scholarship recipients; Outstanding achievement in the Major Project: The Sharon Borine Award; 2015-16 UROP recipients; Donor Awards for Psychology Undergraduate Engagement recipients; and 2015-16 Psi Chi Inductees

Please forward any questions to Mike Houlahan, mhoulaha@umn.edu.
Faculty and Staff, please RSVP via our web form here:

Thank you for your support of our undergraduate students!