We are delighted to announce that Dr. David Antonucci (PhD, 1981) is the 2020 winner of the Alfred M. Wellner Lifetime Achievement Award for Research Excellence from the National Register of Health Service Psychologists. Congratulations, David!

On winning the award, Dr. Antonucci writes, “The truth is I credit the University of Oregon psychology department for teaching me how to be a scientist practitioner. In my opinion, it is one of the greatest psychology departments in the country.”

The National Register’s Awards Committee selected Dr. Antonuccio for the Wellner award based on his numerous professional accomplishments, dedication to advocacy, and leadership in psychology. Among these many accomplishments, Dr. Antonuccio testified in the 2004 FDA hearings on the increased suicide risk of antidepressants in children, testimony that contributed to the black box warnings on antidepressant use in children. He has published and presented extensively on the efficacy of antidepressants and on the behavioral treatment of smoking cessation.

Upon receiving the award, Dr. Antonuccio said, “Clinical research is essential to the development of effective treatments. This award for excellence in research means the world to me because it is given by an organization that represents health care providers, the group of psychologists with which I most identify. I love doing psychotherapy. The tools we have as psychologists are powerful and we know that because of clinical research evaluating treatment outcomes. It has been said that ‘you can give a person fish and feed him for a day, or you can teach him how to fish and feed him for a lifetime.’ In my view, psychotherapy is the equivalent of teaching someone how to fish. Clinical research has shown us how to do that most effectively.”

More information about Dr. Antonucci’s award is here.

Congratulations to clinical area doctoral candidate Monika Lind for placing second in the American Psychological Association’s “Psychological Science in 3” contest! You can view Monika’s presentation at this link – the best 180 seconds you’ll spend all day!

We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2020 Departmental Graduate Awards:

We are also delighted to celebrate the undergraduate award winner

Rennie Kendrick won the Aaron Novick Thesis Award for her honors thesis completed in Dasa Zeithamova’s lab. Kendrick is also honored as one of the Oregon Six students, who are voted by their peers in Phi Beta Kappa as the most outstanding of those elected to membership that year.

Congratulations to our graduate and undergraduate students on winning these awards!

Congratulations to the undergraduates who won Psychology awards for posters they submitted to UO’s 2020 Undergraduate Research Symposium! Two students tied for the Psychology Grand Prize, given to the best overall poster. This award will be shared by Alex Boxberger, for a poster about “The effect of maternal borderline personality disorder symptoms on child externalizing problems, as mediated by parenting stress and maternal warmth,” and by Amy Chen, for the poster “Individual differences in memory self-efficacy and learning ability.”

Psychology’s Methodological Excellence Award went to Joshua Pearman‘s poster about “What parts of status matter? Comparing respect and admiration to social influence,” and the Innovation and Independence Award in Psychology went to Clare Brinkman, for the poster “Naturalistic perspective taking: Themes found in people’s naturalistic accounts.”

These students, who were selected by a faculty committee, will receive monetary awards. The department is very proud of its high level of undergraduate involvement in research and congratulates these four students for their outstanding posters.

Assistant Professor Sarah DuBrow has been named a 2020 Sloan Research Fellow! The Sloan Fellowships are prestigious awards given to outstanding early-stage scholars in the natural sciences. Congratulations, Dr. DuBrow!

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation congratulates the winners of the 2020 Sloan Research Fellowships. These 126 early-career scholars represent the most promising scientific researchers working today. Their achievements and potential place them among the next generation of scientific leaders in the U.S. and Canada. Winners receive $75,000, which may be spent over a two-year term on any expense supportive of their research.

Congratulations to Professor Jagdeep Bala for winning the prestigious Tykeson Teaching Award from the College of Arts and Sciences!

Divisional Dean for the National Sciences Hal Sadofsky surprised Jag by presenting the award to Jag during her Peer Advisors class meeting. All the other CAS deans were in attendance (Ford, Blonigen, Scher, & Wonham), plus Department Head Ulrich Mayr, former Tykeson Teaching Award winner Jordan Pennefather, multiple Psychology Department faculty, some staff members, and the three advising GEs in Psych (Everett, Fridman, and Bedford-Peterson) who work with Jag. Jag’s husband, Avinash, was also able to be there for the surprise.

You can read what Dean Hal Sadofsky said about Bala’s teaching and see pictures below:

[embeddoc url=”https://blogs.uoregon.edu/psychology/files/2020/02/Bala_Award_Tribute.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]

Congratulations to Sarah DuBrow and Kate Mills on being named “Rising Stars” by the Association for Psychological Science, the most prominent international psychology research society! The competitive award goes to outstanding early career researchers across all fields in psychology “whose innovative work has already advanced the field and signals great potential for their continued contributions.” Congratulations, Sarah and Kate!

We are very proud of alumnus Keely Muscatell (BA, 2006), who also received the prize. Muscatell since earned her doctorate at UCLA and is now an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Congratulations, Keely!

Our department annually recognizes the work of our outstanding students with awards, made possible by donations from generous alumni. These annual awards are:

• The Norman D. Sundberg Fellowship in Psychology, given to outstanding Psychology doctoral students whose research focus is on cultural, community, clinical or personality assessment issues to honor the life and work of Norman Sundberg.
  • This year’s Norman D. Sundberg Fellows are Melissa Barnes, Katherine Hagan and Tamara Niella.

• The Beverly Fagot Dissertation Fellowship, given to an outstanding Psychology doctoral student who has advanced to candidacy and has a research focus in the area of social development and/or developmental psychopathology to honor the life and work of Beverly Fagot.
  • This year’s Beverly Fagot fellow is Grace Binion.

• The Gregores Graduate Student Research Award, made possible by a generous gift from George Gregores in honor of his son who graduated with dual degrees in Psychology and Political Science in 2010.
  • This year’s award recipeints are Monika Lind and Cameron Kay.

• The Distinguished Teaching Award, given to a Psychology graduate student (or students) who have demonstrated excellence in undergraduate classroom teaching.
  • This year’s award recipients are Arian Mobasser and Jenn Lewis.

Congratulations to our award winners!

Jordan Pennefather, one of our excellent department instructors, was recently honored with the Tykeson Award for Undergraduate Teaching. (more…)