Chair Communications
Happy New Year and best wishes to everyone as we soon begin the spring semester! I hope each of you had a safe and relaxing break and are enjoying a productive start to 2019.
Just prior to the winter break, we extended offers to two faculty candidates, one in Counseling and one in Quantitative/Psychometric Methods. Negotiations are currently underway, and I will share an update as soon as I can. I want to take this opportunity to thank the Appointments Committee, in particular Andrew Oxenham (chair) and Missy Jones (staff support), who expertly shepherded our two faculty searches this fall. The candidates they helped to recruit and court are excellent, and the recruitment process ran very well.
As I mentioned in my December update, we are putting the finishing touches on our Three-year Budget Plan, which we will submit to the college on January 15. After that, we plan to dive into longer-term departmental strategic planning. Thus far, we have identified four strategic goals: 1) improve our science by becoming leaders in the development, adoption, and dissemination of open science best practices; 2) enhance diversity and inclusion by increasing our number of underrepresented students, faculty, and staff and by improving the department’s diversity climate; 3) improve the undergraduate and graduate student experience/training by enhancing opportunities with mentoring, research, engagement, and advanced methodologies; and 4) increase collaboration within the department to foster more partnerships with research, grants, projects, and teaching. This spring, we will identify strategies and specific action plans to help us achieve these goals. I will be soliciting input from faculty, staff, and students, so please watch for ways in which you can be involved in this important process.
For now, enjoy the rest of winter break prior to the start of spring classes!
Jeff
Announcements
Psychology Undergraduate Advising created a new video to help students better learn about our final Capstone Course. Those who watch the video will learn more specifics about the Psychology Capstone Course. This video, which highlights the differences between the three capstone track options (3901W-Research, 3902W-Individual Interest, 3903W-Community Engagement) and explains how the course is set up & what are class expectations, is now housed on the undergraduate website. Please feel free to share it. Vimeo link.
Awards and Accomplishments
Professor Robert Krueger is listed on the Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers list for 2018. Clarivate Analytics describes the list as follows: "This list recognizes world-class researchers selected for their exceptional research performance, demonstrated by the production of multiple highly cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in Web of Science."
Jill Fish (Counseling Psychology - Graduate student) gave a TEDxTalk on “Honoring Indigenous Cultures and Histories”. This took place at the TEDxMinneapolis in August 2018. Here you may find more information on Jill's work and her talk may be viewed here.
Mindy Westlund Schreiner (CSPR Graduate Student) received the UofM’s Nomination for the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools’ (MAGS) Annual Distinguished Master’s Thesis Competition for her master's thesis titled "Resting-State Functional Connectivity of the Precuneus Associated with Suicidality in Adolescents with Major Depressive Disorder", which she defended in July 2016. Congratulations, Mindy and best of luck in the MAGS competition!
Ummul Kathawalla (Counseling Psychology - Graduate Student) has been selected as the Graduate Student Representative to the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS). SIPS brings together scholars working to improve methods and practices in psychological science. More information.
The Sharon Borine Award, given each semester to acknowledge undergraduate seniors whose final submissions for their major project course are of the highest quality. Congratulations to these Fall 2018 award winners!
- Sydney Hosley (Interrogative Techniques and the Formation of False Memories and False Confessions)
- Linda Lu (The Relationship Between Physicians’ Nonverbal Behaviors and Patients’ Perceptions of Empathy) and
- Kelly Ochocki (Personality, depression and affective experience across the transition to parenthood).
PsyIT
Start the New Year with Google Calendar
View this short video clip [38 sec] to see how easy it is to schedule an event with multiple people without emails or Doodles. This works best if all of us use Google Calendar for work (you can sync your Work calendar with other calendars like iCal or Fantastical).
To hear more about features and best practices of Google Calendar, Drive and Docs, join the next D2T (Driven to Teach) lunchtime meeting on February 7, 2019.
For questions, please contact Silke Moeller <smoeller@umn.edu>, N211 Elliott.
Upcoming Events
Save the Date: Psychology Undergraduate Celebration in May!
Psychology Undergraduate Celebration
Friday, May 3rd, 2019 from 4:00pm - 6:00pm
Campus Club - Coffman Memorial Union
Official RSVP invitations will be sent at a future date!
Latest Events:
Pictures from our ugly DEPARTMENTAL sweater meeting December 14, 2018 are found here.