April 2016

April 11, 2016

News – In, About, and For Our Department
Psychology — Georgia Southern University
April, 2016

Faculty and Staff Awards and Honors

• Marcella Stewart, administrative assistant, and Janet Walker, student advisor, both won 2016 Staff Service and Merit Awards of Excellence.
• Dr. Ty W. Boyer was invited to serve as an Associate Editor of the journal Child Development.

Student Awards and Honors

• Ashley Williams, Psychology/Biology major and Honors student, has been accepted into the NIH Cancer Research Interns Summer Internship Program. This selective program seeks to prepare students for a future in cancer research. After GSU, Ashley will be pursuing a dual Ph.D./MD program.
• Zack Dietrich was awarded a student research grant from the Wilderness Medical Society in the amount of $5,000 to support examining physiological sleep data associated with wilderness therapy.

Presentations

• Dr. Bradley Sturz presented a departmental colloquium entitled Detecting the Perception of Illusory Spatial Boundaries: Evidence from Distance Judgments.
• Jessica Le (MS student) and Dr. Karen Naufel presented at the Southeastern Teaching of Psychology Annual Conference on March 5, 2016 in Atlanta.
• Lotte Pummerer and Michael Nielsen presented, “Catalysts of Sanctification: Feelings of Awe, Connectedness, and Culture,” at the annual meeting of the Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, in Brooklyn, New York, March 11, 2016.

Publications

• Psy.D. student Arthur Hatton and Michael Nielsen published “War on Terror” in our Backyard: Effects of framing and violent propaganda on anti-Muslim prejudice, in Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression.
• Michael Nielsen coauthored with researchers at Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Church Attendance and Religious Experience: Differential Associations to Well-being for Norwegian Women and Men? in the journal SAGE Open.
• With former MS in Experimental Psychology student Joshua Edwards and current student Z. Kade Bell, Dr. Ty W. Boyer and Dr. Bradley R. Sturz published an article in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, entitled “Isolated processing of geometric shapes and their corresponding shape words: Evidence from a delayed match-to-sample task.”
• Dr. Sturz and Dr. Bodily published a manuscript entitled: Detecting the perception of illusory spatial boundaries: Evidence from distance judgments, in Cognition.
• Dr. Wilson and Dr. Joye published an invited chapter entitled “The marriage of statistics and research methods”, in Annual Report of Conference Proceedings for the Society for the Teaching of Psychology.

Our Graduate Students, Movin’ on Up!

• Courtney Beussink, a student in our experimental master’s program, will attend Rosalind Franklin’s Ph.D. program in Clinical Psychology.
• From Dr. Yancey, Director of Clinical Training for the Psy. D. Program:  “We had another great match year, with 100% match and 100% APA accredited internships.” For those who may not know, this is the second year in a row in which every one of our 4^th year Psy. D. students not only found an internship site of their choice, but all of those sites are accredited by the APA.

Our Undergraduates, Headed to Grad School and Getting Jobs!

• Grace Pniewski – Georgia State’s Masters in Education Professional School Counseling
• Kathryn Lengel – Mercer University at Macon MFT Masters in Family Therapy
• Aimee Bozeman – Ph.D. Experimental Psychology program at Idaho State
• Sarah Holmes, an Honors student – UGA Master of Education in Professional Counseling (School Counseling)
• Moriah Dees – Auburn’s Master of Education program in Clinical Mental Health Counseling
• Westly Hatfield-Reavis – Inside Sales Professional at Red Venturer, Charlotte, NC
• Adam Holladay – Georgia Southern University, Masters of Education in the Counselor Education/Clinical Mental Health Counseling program

Alicia Carter, one of our recent graduates, was Georgia Southern University’s representative at the state’s academic recognition day. She is pictured here with Chancellor Huckaby and the representatives from other institutions. Alicia is standing, 4th from the right.