Department of Psychology // Department of Psychology

Psychologist Mark Cummings Studies How Political Violence Impacts Children

2012-02-20T14:00:00-05:00

Political violence and the aftermath of war are known to be harmful to children’s and teens’ mental health and well-being, but until now, few studies have examined how this happens.

A new longitudinal study of neighborhoods in Belfast, Northern Ireland, led by University of Notre Dame Psychology Professor Mark Cummings, has found political violence affects children by upsetting the ways their families function, resulting in behavior problems and mental health symptoms among the youths over extended periods of time.

“Our findings suggest that working with families in communities affected by political violence may have long-term benefits for children in those families,” according to Cummings.

The study, in the journal Child Development, was a collaboration among researchers at Notre Dame, Catholic University of America, Queen’s University Belfast, and the University of Ulster.

Funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the study involved some 300 families living in segregated, socially deprived neighborhoods in Belfast, in neighborhoods that ranked low on measures of income, health, education, proximity to services, crime, and quality of life. Mothers and children filled out surveys annually for three years, addressing such factors as how their families functioned, children’s emotional and behavioral responses to conflict in the home, and how much they knew about antisocial behavior in the community. Antisocial behavior included, for example, blast bombs or petrol bombs exploded by members of another community or someone beaten by people from another community. Researchers also recorded the number of politically motivated deaths in families’ neighborhoods as an index of political violence.

The study found a link between historical levels of political violence, and current reports of conflict and violence in the community. Awareness of community conflict and violence between Catholics and Protestants was related to higher levels of family conflict a year later. Children who experienced family conflict as a result of political violence reported greater emotional insecurity about family relationships, which also resulted in more mental health symptoms and behavior problems over time.

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Originally published at newsinfo.nd.edu.

Psychologist Cindy Bergeman Studies Aging and Resiliency

2012-02-20T14:00:00-05:00

In an early job as a social worker for senior citizens, Cindy Bergeman began to wonder: Why did some of the people she worked with have such a positive attitude while others seemed so dreary? When faced with adversity or stress, why did some weather the storm better than others?

Bergeman, now a professor in Notre Dame’s Department of Psychology, has spent more than two decades pursuing the answers to those questions.

As a developmental psychologist, her research focuses on investigating patterns of variability and change in physical and psychological health across the lifespan and identifying the genetic and environmental factors that may influence that process.

Her major project is a decade-long investigation called the Notre Dame Study of Health and Well-Being, for which she recently received two grants totaling $3.3 million.

Taking the Long View

When complete, the study will provide some of the most detailed information to date about human beings’ ability to deal with stress and adversity throughout life, and the impact that has on physical and mental health.

“It’s a tremendous amount of data,” Bergeman says. “We’re bringing together a lot of very interesting threads of research into a single study that will allow us to get a snapshot of people and to follow their lives over time.”

The National Institute on Aging (NIA), which helped launch the study five years ago, has now awarded Bergeman $3.1 million, five-year grant to continue work on the project, while a new, $200,000 grant from the John Templeton Foundation will fund related research looking at the role of spirituality and religion in dealing with stress.

The Notre Dame Study of Health and Well-Being started in 2006, looking at subjects age 60 to 75 from a five-county area of Northern Indiana. It had three components.

Each year, participants filled out a 50-page questionnaire that asked about a subject’s personality, stressors, social support, and physical and mental health.

In years one, three, and five, participants also filled out a daily diary for 56 days that asked questions about daily hassles or events, what type of good or bad things happened, and how the person dealt with them.

In years two and four, Bergeman and her colleagues interviewed a subsample of the participants and asked them to share their life stories, including turning points such as the loss of a spouse or child, and how they were affected by them.

Expanding the Scope

Bergeman determined early on, however, that the study would not be complete without research involving a middle-age cohort.

“It’s a lifetime of developing strategies that allow you to deal with adversity,” she says.

Bergeman sought and received additional funding from NIA in the second year of the study to add subjects age 40 to 59. With NIA’s latest grant, she will continue with the existing group of midlife and older participants and now add a cohort of younger people age 18 to 40.

When complete, the study will include 10 years of data on older participants, nine years on the midlife cohort, and five years on the younger subjects. In all, there will be almost 1,000 subjects.

Bergeman’s co-principal investigators on the NIA grant at Notre Dame are Matthew A. Fitzsimon Chair of Psychology Scott Maxwell, William K. Warren Foundation Professor of Psychology Scott Monroe; John Cardinal O’Hara, C.S.C., Associate Professor of Psychology Gitta Lubke; Nancy O’Neill Collegiate Chair in Psychology Jessica Payne; and Assistant Professor Michelle Wirth. Former post-doctoral fellow Anthony Ong (Cornell University) and former colleague Steve Boker (University of Virginia) are consultants.

On the Templeton grant, Bergeman will work with graduate student and co-principal investigator Brenda Whitehead.

That grant will fund collection of health data—including reviewing medical records, performing physical exams, and collecting blood from some participants—in order to get a better sense of their physical health. The research team will then compare that information with data from the 10-year study to help understand the impact of religion and spirituality in participants’ lives.

“We are interested in the variability in the way people have experienced stress, and variability in religious/spiritual experiences and the extent to which those experiences can buffer health,” Bergeman says.

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Originally published by Sara Burnett at al.nd.edu on February 07, 2012.

Graduate Student Earns Accolades for Research on Cancer Survivors

2012-01-31T09:00:00-05:00

Post-doctoral fellow Errol Philip made history this fall when he became the first two-time winner of a prestigious American Psychological Association graduate student award—just the latest in a long list of accolades.

Philip won the APA’s Division 17 Health Psychology Graduate Student Award for his paper, “Depression and Cancer Survivorship: Prevalence Rates and the Importance of Coping Self-Efficacy in a Sample of Long-Term Survivors." He won the award in 2008 for a paper on quality of life in cancer patients.

He recently completed an internship at Yale University School of Medicine and successfully defended his dissertation at Notre Dame. This past spring, Philip also won the Graduate Student Research Award from the Ethnic Minority and Multicultural Health Special Interest Group at the Society for Behavioral Medicine.

Now in the midst of a two-year, post-doctoral appointment at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Philip credits the supportive environment at Notre Dame for much of his success. During his first year at Notre Dame, for example, Philip was awarded a Zahm Travel Grant to spend the summer at Sloan-Kettering, where he developed relationships with people who were mentors throughout his graduate program and were instrumental in landing his post-doctoral fellowship.

“I don’t think I would be where I am today without some of the support I received from Notre Dame and my mentor, Professor Tom Merluzzi,” Philip says.

A native of Australia, Philip became interested in the psychology of cancer survivors while working with a group that provided support services to cancer patients in Melbourne, where he earned his undergraduate degree in psychology. In 2006, he came to Notre Dame specifically to work with Merluzzi, a professor of psychology who studies coping processes in people with cancer and also serves as director of the College of Arts and Letters’ Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts.

A few years ago, a Notre Dame alumni newsletter featured a story on Merluzzi’s lab and Philip’s research on cancer survivors. “The story made mention of the fact that for many patients, life doesn’t just go back to normal after treatment."

The message resonated strongly with alumni who were also cancer survivors, a number of whom called or sent emails to Merluzzi’s lab in the Department of Psychology. This feedback became the impetus for Philip’s most recent, award-winning research.

The study looked at the rates and predictors of depression in individuals five to 10 years after the completion of cancer treatment. Philip found that even though far removed from treatment, a significant minority of people were reporting symptoms of depression at a rate higher than would be expected in the general population. He also found that people’s confidence in being able to manage the physical symptoms associated with cancer, such as pain and fatigue that continued after treatment, was a very strong predictor of how much depression they reported.

Philip hopes the findings can be used to implement interventions that will help equip survivors with skills that may reduce their chances of experiencing significant depression.

“It is only somewhat recently—as more people are living with a cancer diagnosis—that we are becoming aware of the challenges these individuals face in survivorship,” he says. “It is important that we look at the long-term effects of cancer and its treatment, and how best to assist people in managing these challenges.”

At Sloan-Kettering, Philip will continue his research examining the long-term challenges that survivors face, and the most effective form of support that health professionals can offer them. He is also focusing on the role lifestyle factors play in cancer and identifying what survivors can do to reduce their risk of recurrence or future disease, as well as how health professionals can help promote these efforts.

Merluzzi calls Philip one of his best graduate students and one of the best in the clinical psychology program, in large part due to Philip’s boundless energy and unparalleled work ethic.

“We continue to collaborate on research, though I have trouble keeping up with his productivity,” Merluzzi says. “It is a pleasure to work with a student like Errol, where at some point in the process of mentoring, one stops and admits that the mentoring is mutual.”

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Psychologist Nicole McNeil Developing New Math Learning Strategies

2012-01-10T10:00:00-05:00

What do children know about mathematics before they start learning it in school? How do external factors like language, education, and culture affect children’s understanding? What is the best way to structure an environment so they have the building blocks needed for success in math?

These are just some of the questions Notre Dame psychologist Nicole McNeil seeks to answer in her research, for which she recently received a three-year, $565,000 grant from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES).

“The development of mathematical thinking presents a paradox,” says the Mary Hesburgh Flaherty and James F. Flaherty Assistant Professor of Psychology, whose scholarship focuses on cognitive development, specifically mathematical cognition.

“On one hand, young children and even infants have been shown to have a surprisingly sophisticated understanding of abstract math concepts,” she says. “On the other hand, math is a notoriously difficult subject to learn in school, with many children and adults failing to achieve basic competence.”

Finding Solutions

This is McNeil’s second IES award. In 2007, she received a four-year grant totaling more than $750,000 to determine whether modifications to traditional arithmetic practice could improve children’s understanding of mathematical equivalence.

The new funding will allow McNeil to build on what she learned during the first study in order to “develop and test a comprehensive intervention that is affordable, effective at producing mastery, and easy for teachers and parents to administer in schools, after-school programs, and homes.”

Her goal, she says, is to create a program that has the potential to have “real and lasting benefits for children’s mathematical achievement and algebra readiness in the long term.”

To further support her work, McNeil has also recently been awarded a five-year CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) worth approximately $750,000. CAREER grants are NSF’s “most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.”

As part of the NSF grant, McNeil will conduct a longitudinal study to see if a better understanding of math equivalence in the second grade leads to greater success in higher grades, especially algebra readiness in the sixth grade.

Discovering a Passion

As an undergraduate, McNeil planned to become a doctor and was double majoring in chemistry and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. One of her professors suggested she build her medical school application resume by working in a research lab on campus, and she found her way into one focused on cognitive development and communication.

“I developed a passion for cognitive development research—I couldn’t get enough of it—so I abandoned my idea of going to medical school and instead chose to pursue a Ph.D. in psychology,” she says.

Inspired by that experience, McNeil now challenges her students in the Department of Psychology to discover their own academic passions. She encourages them to find a “big question” that intrigues them and then works to provide the tools and guidance they need to pursue an answer.

“I feel strongly that students need to have one-on-one attention from faculty members,” McNeil says. “It gives them the opportunity to bounce ideas off and ask questions of an expert in the field. This type of intellectual discourse puts them in the position to eventually make a real contribution to the field.

“Students in my lab also get to be involved in every aspect of research, from conceptualization to dissemination.”

Through all this work on her own scholarly projects and with her students, McNeil hopes she can help parents and teachers determine the best ways to structure each child’s mathematical education so that all children can learn to be successful in school—and beyond.

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Originally published by Joanna Basile at al.nd.edu on January 06, 2012.

Psychologist Jill Lany Reveals Surprisingly Early Gift of Gab

2011-12-13T12:00:00-05:00

From the moment they’re born, babies are highly attuned to communicate and motivated to interact. And they’re great listeners.

New research from the University of Notre Dame shows that during the first year of life, when babies spend so much time listening to language, they’re actually tracking word patterns that will support their process of word-learning that occurs between the ages of about 18 months and two years.

“Babies are constantly looking for language clues in context and sound,” says Jill Lany, assistant professor of psychology and director of Notre Dame’s Infant Studies Lab, where she conducts studies on how babies acquire language.

“My research suggests that there are some surprising clues in the sound stream that may help babies learn the meanings of words. They can distinguish different kinds of words like nouns and verbs by information in that sound stream.”

Lany’s studies show that babies as young as 12 months can identify “adjacent relationships” in which a phrase or sound like “it’s a” occurs immediately before an object.

“If I were to say to you, ‘Oh look, it’s a dax,’ you might not know what a ‘dax’ is, but the cue ‘it’s a’ lets a baby know that what follows is an object,” Lany says.

Similarly, if a person were to say, “I’m daxing it,” the same principal is at work with cues and word patterns that indicate a verb or action word. Babies actually can use these patterns as clues to the meanings of new words they are learning.

By about 15 months, babies are able to track more complicated “non-adjacent relationships” in which the word cue may be even further removed.

“We often think about grammar coming after word-learning, but in fact, my research shows that all this information that babies are picking up in that first year of life about how words are occurring in their language, actually is supporting this process of word-learning prior to mastery of language.”

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Originally published at newsinfo.nd.edu.

Instant Insights

2011-12-12T12:00:00-05:00

Research G.A. Radvansky recently published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology is attracting all sorts of media attention. The story—about how walking through a doorway affects memory—was picked up by Men’s Health Magazine, MSNBC.com, Freakonomics, U.S. News & World Report, Time, National Geographic, ABC News, CBS News, The Huffington Post, and dozens of other news outlets around the world (including Canada, the United Kingdom, India, Korea) and even on the Middle East North Africa Financial Network. Go ahead and Google it. But best of it all, it was the set-up for a joke on Leno! Leno!

Congratulations to Jessica Payne on receiving the Laird Cermak Award from the International Neuropsychological Society. The award is given to a candidate who is less than five years from completion of training for outstanding research in memory or memory disorders. The Cermak award was given for Jess’s work titled “Sleep Preferentially Benefits Emotional Components of Scenes: Behavioral and Neural Evidence.”

This fall, she also delivered remarks (“Sleep, Stress and Positive Affect: What Business Leaders Need to Know About the Brain”) to the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensborough, N.C. This talk led to Jessica being named the H. Smith Richardson Jr. Fellow, a prestigious and highly remunerative award. The fellowship begins this month and ends next November. Congratulations, Jessica!

I’m delighted to report that Nicole McNeil has been appointed the Mary Hesburgh Flaherty and James F. Flaherty Assistant Professor of Psychology and Jessica Payne has been appointed to the Nancy O’Neill Chair in Psychology for a three-year term. These appointments as collegiate chairs recognize “outstanding work as a scholar, teacher, and citizen of the university.” Indeed, and bravo! Please extend warm and hearty congratulations to both Nicole and Jessica on these prestigious and well-deserved appointments.

Congratulations to Brad Gibson, who was appointed recently as consulting editor for both the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General and Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

Congratulations to Anita Kelly and co-PIs Dawn Gondoli and Lijuan Peggy Wang on landing a three-year grant from the Templeton Foundation called “The Science of Honesty: Can Being More Honest Improve Health?” The project involves a series of experiments in which participants are induced to drop their major lies and white lies for a 10-week period. During this period, and at three- and nine-month follow-ups, changes in their relationships, perceived integrity, and health are documented and compared with control participants.

I’m delighted to report that our new colleague Sidney D’Mello has landed an NSF REESE grant for more than $1 million to fund a three-year project called “Beyond Boredom: Modeling and Promoting Engagement during Complex Learning.” REESE grants fund research on research and evaluation on education in science and education. Congratulations Sidney!

Congratulations to John Borkowski, the Andrew J. McKenna Family Research Professor of Psychology, on his appointment to a three-year term on the Board of Scientific Counselors of the Centers for Disease Control.

Chuck Crowell and Mike Villano—and co-authors Michael Kennedy, Jim Schmiedeler, Aaron Striegel and Johan Kuitse—earned the best paper award at the IEEE Healthcom 2011 conference held in Columbia, Mo., back in June. The title of the best paper was “Enhanced Feedback in Balance Rehabilitation Using the Nintendo Wii Balance Board.” Here is an Notre Dame news article on this innovative work.

Quantitative Psychology Professors Honored

2011-12-06T13:30:00-05:00

Three University of Notre Dame psychologists have been recognized for their work to more precisely measure a wide range of research topics, from happiness and depression to educational achievement.

Specialists in the demanding subfield of quantitative psychology, Scott Maxwell, Zahng Guangjian, and Ying “Alison” Cheng design the statistical scaffolding needed to support measurable research into what are some of the most ephemeral of human conditions and concepts.

For a Lifetime of Achievement

Scott Maxwell, the Matthew A. Fitzsimons Chair in Psychology, was awarded the American Psychological Association’s 2010 Samuel J. Messick Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award for “distinguished theoretical or empirical contributions to basic research in psychology.”

The honor came just one year after the association awarded presidential citations to Maxwell and Notre Dame Psychology Professor George S. Howard for “a lifetime of outstanding contributions”—including “developing innovative and novel methodologies such as response-shift and retrospective designs” that have helped psychologists around the world conduct more accurate research.

Maxwell specializes in research methodology and applied behavioral statistics. While he works closely with Howard, he also partners with a number of other faculty members and current and former students.

“I feel very fortunate to have exciting colleagues in the psychology department,” Maxwell says. “It is a lot of fun to brainstorm together and help them think about ways of answering questions.”

His recent research has been focused in two main areas: the role of sample-size planning in psychological research and mediation analysis (studying the underlying causal mechanism by which one variable causes another).

In addition to his research agenda, Maxwell serves as editor for the prestigious Psychological Methods journal and teaches statistics and quantitative psychology courses for both graduate and undergraduate students in Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters.

“The most gratifying aspect for me of being a professor is being able to develop students into colleagues and then continue working with them for years or even decades,” he says.

New Approaches to Measurement

Assistant Professor Guangjian Zhang was honored with the 2010 Cattell Early Career Research Award from the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology. The annual prize recognizes a young researcher who “has made significant contributions to the field of multivariate experimental psychology and who shows promise of continued work of a very high quality.”

“This means a lot—I know that people are paying attention to my work,” Zhang says.

The Cattell award was especially gratifying, he says, because a number of his colleagues in the Department of Psychology are past winners. They include 2007 winner Gitta Lubke, the John Cardinal O'Hara, C.S.C., Associate Professor of Psychology; 2002 winner Ke-Hai Yuan, professor of psychology; and 1990 winner Scott Maxwell.

Zhang has spent the last 10 years seeking more accurate measures for abstract variables such as happiness and depression. As part of his research, he employs the Latent Variable Approach, a system in which multiple measurements are synthesized to accurately gauge a transient concept.

“This approach allows us to study a concept which cannot be measured directly, concepts for which we don’t have perfect measures,” says Zhang. “How can we make inferences from the imperfect measures we do have to really examine underlying constructs? I’m working on the underlying framework.”

And Notre Dame is a particularly good place to pursue such challenging questions, he says.

“The quantitative program at ND is one of the largest programs in the country, probably in the world, so I have wonderful tools and wonderful colleagues here.”

Innovative Methods for Educational Testing

Another rising star in the subfield, Assistant Professor Ying “Alison” Cheng, researches educational and psychological measurements, particularly the computerized adaptive testing used in schools.

In 2011, CTB/McGraw-Hill invited Cheng to be the featured speaker at its conference on psychometrics. It also awarded Cheng Innovation Research and Development grants in 2010 and 2011 for her work with Yuan.

“I’m very lucky in receiving this award,” Cheng says, “because funding innovative research takes courage and commitment from these companies. They’re taking risks, in a way, so I really feel blessed. I can try out ideas with adaptive testing, which, in my opinion, is the future of testing.”

Her work is already attracting notice. In 2009, she won the National Council on Measurements in Education’s Bradley Hanson Award, which honors “a substantive contribution to the field of educational measurement.”

Cheng’s research seeks to improve the precision and usefulness of large-scale standardized tests such as the SAT, GRE, and statewide student assessment exams. “A lot of testing is used for big-stakes decision making—whether you can graduate, get into a school, get a degree, etc.,” she says. “If anything is used for high-stakes decisions, you need to guarantee that it’s done right and fair to everybody.”

The testing research, she says, complements the other part of her work at Notre Dame teaching statistics to undergraduates and graduate students. “I am blessed to be in a very supportive and collegial environment, which is essential to sustaining high productivity,” she says.

“My research focuses on issues in education,” she says, “so I feel that my passion for research and my passion for teaching come together in perfect unity.”

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Psychologist Cindy Bergeman Studies Aging and Resiliency

2011-12-02T15:15:00-05:00

Bergeman, now a professor in Notre Dame’s Department of Psychology, has spent more than two decades pursuing the answers to those questions.

Her major project is a decade-long investigation called the Notre Dame Study of Health and Well-Being, for which she recently received two grants totaling $3.3 million.

Taking the Long View

The National Institute on Aging (NIA), which helped launch the study five years ago, has now awarded Bergeman a $3.1 million, five-year grant to continue work on the project, while a new $200,000 grant from the John Templeton Foundation will fund related research looking at the role of spirituality and religion in dealing with stress.

The Notre Dame Study of Health and Well-Being started in 2006, looking at subjects ages 60 to 75 from a five-county area of Northern Indiana. It had three components.

Each year, participants filled out a 50-page questionnaire that asked about a subject’s personality, stressors, social support, and physical and mental health.
In years one, three, and five, participants also filled out a daily diary for 56 days that asked questions about daily hassles or events, what types of good or bad things happened, and how the person dealt with them.
In years two and four, Bergeman and her colleagues interviewed a subsample of the participants and asked them to share their life stories, including turning points such as the loss of a spouse or child, and how they were affected by them.

Expanding the Scope

Bergeman determined early on, however, that the study would not be complete without research involving a middle-age cohort.

“It’s a lifetime of developing strategies that allow you to deal with adversity,” she says.

Bergeman sought and received additional funding from NIA in the second year of the study to add subjects agse 40 to 59. With NIA’s latest grant, she will continue with the existing group of midlife and older participants and now add a cohort of younger people ages 18 to 40.

When complete, the study will include 10 years of data on older participants, nine years on the midlife cohort, and five years on the younger subjects. In all, there will be almost 1,000 subjects.

Bergeman’s co-principal investigators on the NIA grant at Notre Dame are Matthew A. Fitzsimon Chair of Psychology Scott Maxwell, William K. Warren Foundation Professor of Psychology Scott Monroe; John Cardinal O'Hara, C.S.C., Associate Professor of Psychology Gitta Lubke; Nancy O'Neill Collegiate Chair in Psychology Jessica Payne; and Assistant Professor Michelle Wirth. Former post-doctoral fellow Anthony Ong (Cornell University) and former colleague Steve Boker (University of Virginia) are consultants.

On the Templeton grant, Bergeman will work with graduate student and co-principal investigator Brenda Whitehead.

That grant will fund the collection of health data—including reviewing medical records, performing physical exams, and collecting blood from some participants—in order to get a better sense of their physical health. The research team will then compare that information with data from the 10-year study to help understand the impact of religion and spirituality in participants’ lives.

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Senior Nicole Shea Researches Autism Therapy

2011-12-02T15:05:00-05:00

Senior Nicole Shea’s love for psychology began in a pool.

“In high school, I worked with children with disabilities by teaching them swim lessons,” Shea says, adding that her desire to find ways to help such children only intensified during her first psychology courses at the University of Notre Dame. “I was just drawn to it.”

Shea started working in the Department of Psychology’s labs even before she declared her major, and she has already contributed to a published paper and conference poster.

She is also one of the first undergraduates named lead therapist in a Social Robot Intervention study in Assistant Professor Joshua Diehl’s Laboratory for Understanding Neurodevelopment (F.U.N. Lab).

Research Motivations

As part of that study, she spent eight weeks this summer working one-on-one with four children with autism to help them develop their communication skills.

“It was a great experience,” she says. “I was surprised how involved I got to be in it but definitely learned a lot through the process.”

Currently, Shea is preparing a senior thesis with the help of Diehl. “I’ve been immersed in research through my time at Notre Dame and thought it would be a good experience to do something on my own,” she says.

Her thesis focuses on the role of parental autonomy in the lives of autistic children.

“Autonomy is basically your sense of control in decision making,” she says. “I want to see how children perceive their parents and teachers—whether or not their parents and teachers allow them to make their own decisions and do things on their own, and how that plays out in their lives.”

Shea says she hopes to help fill what she perceives as a gap in autism research with respect to this area, a goal Diehl believes is within reach.

“For years, therapy for individuals with ASD [autism spectrum disorders] has focused on how to shape their behavior through external motivation,” he says. “Nicole, however, has identified the importance of promoting autonomy, and by extension intrinsic motivation, as a factor that will truly lead to sustainable change in the lives of individuals with ASD.

“For this she will collect her own data and not rely on my data at all,” he says, “and I have no doubt that this will lead to more presentations and papers for Nicole.”

Professional Aspirations

Shea says her undergraduate work has inspired her to pursue an advanced degree in psychology and then work in a clinical or research setting with children who have disabilities.

“I think the opportunities I have had to get involved with research … have been really outstanding,” she says. “I have gained a wealth of experience here at Notre Dame.”

With her experience and dedication, Diehl says Shea can make a real contribution to the psychology community. “She is committed to science but keenly aware of the clinical applications of her work,” he says. “She has always been driven to create novel scientific contributions that aren’t just intellectually interesting, but have a meaningful impact on individuals with disabilities and their families.

“She is intelligent, thoughtful, and truly an exemplar of the mission of the department and the University.”

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Notre Dame Researchers Engineer Psychological Innovations

2011-12-02T14:00:00-05:00

A growing collaboration between Notre Dame’s Department of Psychology and Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) has given rise to a number of research projects that explore the interaction of humans with technology.

These interdisciplinary efforts “have been expanding at an impressive rate over the past few years,” says Professor Dan Lapsley, chair of the Department of Psychology, who reports that researchers from the two departments are currently teaming up to advance understanding and practices in areas as wide ranging as stroke rehabilitation, spatial cognition, robotics, and autism treatment.

“Different areas in computer science have always had some relationship with certain areas of psychology or have taken inspiration from them,” notes Kevin Bowyer, CSE chair and the Schubmehl-Prein Professor of Computer Science and Engineering.

“But this is strongly supported at the provost level—and all in the spirit of interdisciplinary, collaborative research where departments get together to solve larger, higher-impact problems than they could individually.”

Creating Synergy

Exemplifying this growing relationship is the recent hire of Sidney D’Mello, whose research spans cognitive psychology, computer science, and education and is the first-ever joint appointment between the College of Engineering and the College of Arts and Letters.

He was recently awarded a National Science Foundation grant for more than $1 million to fund a three-year project in which his team will study boredom and engagement in complex learning environments.

D’Mello comes most recently from the University of Memphis, where he worked on a joint project with researchers at Notre Dame and Sandia National Laboratories—and was impressed, he says, with Notre Dame’s commitment to foster interdisplinary research.

“It was great to see a university take such interdisciplinary initiative,” he says. “because that’s an idea that is thrown around but not always taken seriously.”

In his research, D’Mello works on “emotion-sensitive” computers. He and a colleague have a patent pending on the first fully automated Intelligent Tutoring System that tracks and responds to students’ emotions by monitoring facial expressions, body posture, and the context of their interactions. In practice, the system can provide hints or different stimuli to students who are becoming frustrated, confused, or bored, and then re-engage them.

“It is difficult to study emotions. They’re like snowflakes; every one is different. What attracts me to this work is the ability to do basic research on emotions first—which is the psychology side—and then use any insights gleaned to engineer systems that do something helpful in the real world—that’s the computing side.”

Laurel Riek is another recent faculty hire who is connecting aspects of psychology and computer science. Named CSE’s new Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor, Riek studies human-computer interaction with a focus on robots that can help the elderly and disabled function more independently.

Riek also serves as the director of the University’s Robotics, Health, and Communication Lab, which applies its research to health, education, and quality-of-life issues.

Building Collaborations

Several other faculty are also engaged in the growing collaboration between psychologists and engineers at Notre Dame.

Psychology Professor Laura Carlson explores spatial language and cognition—such as the processes that underlie the way people give and receive directions. She is currently working on a project that enlists “a head-mounted, virtual-reality system for collaborative research at the interface between spatial cognition and engineering.” Her research partners from the College of Engineering are Panos Antsaklis and Steve Batill.

Psychology Associate Professor Chuck Crowell and engineering colleagues Jim Schmiedeler and Aaron Striegel are also working with a grant of nearly $500,000 to study the use of gaming devices such as Nintendo Wii in balance rehabilitation for stroke patients.

On yet another research front, assistant psychology professors Joshua Diehl and Michael Villano, along with Crowell and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center’s Lauren Schmitt, have a paper accepted for publication in Research on Autism Spectrum Disorders that explores the use of robots for individuals with autism spectrum disorders—the first-ever article on robots published in an autism journal.

“These are things that weren’t going to happen quickly in one department,” Bowyer says. “What we do together can change people’s lives and improve care. This collaboration grows the pie for both departments because we’re not worried about boundaries.”

Indeed, this work on autism spectrum disorders is even developing strong ties between faculty in one department and students in another, such as Matt Pruitt, a CSE doctoral candidate, who is working as a researcher in Diehl’s F.U.N. lab for understanding neurodevelopment.

D’Mello says he and his fellow faculty plan to encourage more students to explore collaboration across the colleges. “It is a great opportunity for students from different backgrounds to work together and get exposed to multiple perspectives,” he says.

“In my opinion, the most interesting and fun work is at the boundaries of different fields.”

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Psychologist Nicole McNeil Developing New Math Learning Strategies

2011-12-02T14:00:00-05:00

Finding Solutions

Her goal, she says, is to create a program that has the potential to have “real and lasting benefits for children’s mathematical achievement and algebra readiness in the long term.”

Discovering a Passion

“Students in my lab also get to be involved in every aspect of research, from conceptualization to dissemination.”

Learn More >

Business Thinking Meets Social Innovation

2011-10-11T14:00:00-04:00

Notre Dame students in a College of Arts and Letters course called Foundations of Business Thinking are the only class in the nation invited to participate in the inaugural gathering of ConvergeUS, a new nonprofit initiative dedicated to social innovation through technology.

Chaired by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and TechNet CEO Rey Ramsey, the organization connects leading entrepreneurs, scholars, nonprofits, corporations, and technology experts in an attempt to find innovative solutions to pressing social problems.

In a presentation to students in the class, ConvergeUS Executive Director Patrick Gusman ’84 outlined the organization’s plan to select up to three social issues each year and hold an annual summit where participants will develop a “Technology Innovation Blueprint” to tackle those challenges.

Proposing Solutions

The inaugural event, set for October 6 in Sausalito, Calif., will focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education, the literacy gap among 0-3 year olds, and health literacy.

The Notre Dame students in the Business Thinking course—part of the College’s Computer Applications Program (CAPP)—received the same background materials ConvergeUS fellows were given and will participate in this week’s summit via video conference, says CAPP Director Charles Crowell, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology, who also will serve as a ConvergeUS fellow at the summit.

Jeff Sucec, who teaches the Business Thinking course, says the students will have the opportunity to take part in “ongoing, interactive discussions…not just initially, but throughout the year.

“They’re going to find out very quickly that they can have some substantive input.”

Gaining Experience

Business Thinking is designed to help Arts and Letters students develop a working knowledge of fundamental business disciplines while providing hands-on opportunities to apply their creative thinking, analysis, and problem-solving skills.

The course, Sucec says, is “perfectly aligned with how the business world is moving now. Linear, left-brain oriented thinking needs to be augmented with more expansive, adaptive, flexible thinking.”

In today’s rapidly-changing environment, students with a liberal arts background “are uniquely positioned” to be successful in business, he adds.

Sucec enhances the coursework each semester with a real-world business opportunity that allows students “to take it from the theoretical to the practical.” The new partnership with ConvergeUS is a chance to do just that, he says, while learning from and interacting with cutting-edge technology experts and successful entrepreneurs.

Developing a Partnership

Earlier this fall, Gusman and Karen Proctor ’85, a ConvergeUS adviser, met with the Business Thinking students to discuss trends in corporate responsibility, social innovation, and the ways in which they will be able to contribute to ConvergeUS.

“A lot of this is evolving,” Crowell says. “But the idea of our students having an ongoing role and being the only [student] representatives at this inaugural event, in my opinion, is a pretty big deal.”

The organization, he adds, has a particular appeal to Notre Dame students and alumni because “it is directed at solving some very important, pressing problems that confront the nation.

“My hope is that this University, among all other universities, is one of the main focal points for channeling power into ConvergeUS,” Crowell says. “I think that this is an important movement and something that Notre Dame should be involved in.”

Learn More >

Originally published by Chris Milazzo at al.nd.edu on October 05, 2011.

Notre Dame’s Clinical Psychology Ph.D. Program Accredited

2011-10-03T11:00:00-04:00

The University of Notre Dame’s doctoral program in clinical psychology recently earned accreditation from the American Psychological Association (APA).

This new designation—along with a recently expanded faculty of leading researchers—is putting the College of Arts and Letters’ young clinical program firmly on the fast track to national prominence, says Director Scott Monroe, the William K. Warren Foundation Professor of Psychology.

“I don’t think there’s another program on the planet that in this amount of time has transformed from being unknown to being highly recognizable,” he says.

Counseling to Clinical

The transformation started with a programmatic shift. “We were a counseling program that looked clinical, and we’re becoming a clinical program that has a counseling flair,” says Associate Professor David Smith, the former director who shepherded the program conversion.

Counseling psychology focuses on non-pathological difficulties—“life transitions such as divorce or being away from home that many people go through but some struggle with more than others,” he explains. In contrast, clinical psychology studies diagnostic categories such as addictions, depression, panic disorders, and schizophrenia.

“One strength of counseling is an emphasis on multicultural issues,” Smith says, “and we’re going to carry that forward.”

In some universities, Monroe adds, “clinical and counseling can be very different entities, but here there was overlap so it made sense to move in that direction."

Although the department’s counseling program was great, Monroe says, we recognized that “there would be more opportunities available with a clinical program—a broader foundation for students, with more job availability.”

Influx of Resources

One challenge the department faced in launching the new program was building its clinical presence before being accredited. But with support from the University and College, the department hired four nationally recognized clinical psychologists and five up-and-coming assistant professors since 2006.

“That’s just an unprecedented influx of resources,” Smith says. “With these people, we might already be among the top 10 programs in the country. We’re already getting a lot of attention nationally.”

The senior hires include three endowed chairs—Monroe, David Watson, and Lee Anna Clark—and Professor Anne Simons, who is known for her work in the treatment of both adolescent and adult depression.

“We have a real strength in mood disorders, particularly in depression, and from a variety of perspectives—sleep, marriage and relationships, health, stress,” Smith says. “We also have a number of other traditional clinical psychology areas that are well covered like eating and personality disorders as well as child clinical psychology.”

With accreditation secured and 16 faculty now in place, adds Monroe, the clinical program is set to accomplish great things.

Strengths and Synergies

The William J. and Dorothy K. O’Neill Professor of Psychology, Clark is on the task force for the upcoming fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and kicked off her appointment at Notre Dame with a five-year, $2 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to study personality disorders and the ways in which they are diagnosed.

The Andrew J. McKenna Family Professor of Psychology, Watson is a specialist in personality assessment whose work both investigates the structure and measurement of personality, mood, and examines how personality traits relate to clinical disorders. He recently finished the editorship of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, a flagship journal in the field.

Both Clark and Watson rank among the top 100 most-cited psychologists in the ISI Web of Science index.

Monroe’s own research interests lie in psychopathology, with a particular emphasis on the depressive disorders. He recently published a paper about recurrence of depression in Psychological Review, the preeminent theoretical journal in psychology. He is also former president for the Society of Research in Psychopathology, of which Clark is now president-elect.

“We have so many brand new people within the program,” Smith says. “I’m looking forward to them getting their labs up and running and mastering what they do well. That’s the immediate future. Then we start experiencing some synergies between the areas.”

For example, he says, one assistant professor in the department is focusing on hormone regulation of relationships and mood, while another studies memory and sleep. “We treat sleep disturbance as a symptom of depression, and her work would suggest that maybe sleep disturbance is a cause of depression.

“That’s a fundamental question that needs to be sorted out,” Smith says, “and we’re ideally equipped to do that sort of thing now.”

Learn More >

Originally published by Aaron Smith at al.nd.edu on September 30, 2011.

Learning and remembering linked to holding material in hands, new research shows

2011-09-22T09:00:00-04:00

New research from the University of Notre Dame shows that people’s ability to learn and remember information depends on what they do with their hands while they are learning.

According to a study conducted by Notre Dame Psychology Professor James Brockmole and post-doctoral fellow Christopher Davoli, people holding objects they’re learning about process detail and notice differences among objects more effectively, while keeping the hands away from the objects help people notice similarities and consistencies among those things.

The study will be published in an upcoming issue of Memory and Cognition.

Participants in the study were asked to analyze a set of complex geometric patterns in a series of images. Half the subjects did so while holding their hands alongside the images, while the other half held their hands in their laps.

Results showed that it was harder for people to recognize the commonalities among identical but differently colored patterns if they held them in their hands, suggesting that information near the hands is processed at a deeper level of detail. This orientation to detail, in turn, hampers people’s ability to consider the similarities that exist among slightly different objects.

According to the researchers, these results have evolutionary roots:

“Near the body, and especially near the hands, attention to detail is crucial because subtle differences among objects can differentiate the harmful from the benign,” Brockmole says.

“We needed to recognize which berries were poisonous and which were not; what snakes will bite and which will not. On the other hand, people can think about objects that are farther away from the body in more categorical terms since details are less important.”

These results also could have implications for education, particularly since many educators are moving information from computer screens back into students’ hands with iPads, which also raises questions of how educators depict visual concepts.

Contact: James Brockmole, 574-631-7257, james.brockmole@nd.edu

Originally published by Susan Guibert at newsinfo.nd.edu on September 22, 2011.

John Borkowski Appointed to CDC Board

2011-09-12T15:25:00-04:00

Congratulations to John Borkowski, the Andrew J. McKenna Family Research Professor of Psychology, on his appointment to a three-year term on the Board of Scientific Counselors of the Centers for Disease Control.

Graduate Students Honored With Teaching Awards

2011-06-28T16:10:00-04:00

The University of Notre Dame’s Kaneb Center for Teaching and Learning and Graduate School are pleased to announce the 2010-2011 Kaneb Outstanding Graduate Student Teacher Award winners in the colleges of arts and letters, engineering, and science, and in the School of Architecture.

The graduate students received their awards at the annual dinner held in the lower level of McKenna Hall. A welcome was provided by Graduate School Dean Gregory Sterling with a keynote speech from Steven Schmid, Associate Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering.

College of Arts and Letters

Department of Art, Art History, and Design: Jason Cytacki
Department of Classics: David Pell
Creative Writing Program: Courtney McDermott
Department of Economics: Chadwick Curtis, Regan Deonanan
Department of English: Erin Drew, Lauren Rich, Craig Woelfel
Department of History: Peter Choi, Adam Duker, Allison Edgren, Craig Kinnear
Department of Irish Language & Literature: Amber Handy
Medieval Institute: Katie Bugyis
Ph.D. in Literature Program: James Martell de la Torre
Department of Philosophy : Brian Boeninger, Marcin Iwanicki, Bryan Pilkington, Daniel Sportiello
Department of Political Science: Ashleen Kelly, Gregory Shufeldt
Department of Psychology: Brenda Jackson, Elizabeth Planalp, Laura Taylor
Department of Romance Languages and Literatures: Sara Troyani
Department of Sociology: Ellen Childs, Karen Monique Gregg
Department of Theology: Joshua Lollar, Daniel Smith, Noel Terranova
University Writing Program: Ailbhe Darcy, Marcin Iwanicki

College of Engineering

Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering: Matt Mosby, Ryan Ross, Qin Yang
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering: John Clay, Jared Stefanick
Department of Civil Engineering and Geological Sciences: Keshia Koehn, Christopher Vetter
Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Thidapat Chantem, Allison Regier
Department of Electrical Engineering: Glenn Bradford, Amit Verma

College of Science

Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics: Yuan Liu
Department of Biological Sciences: Ryne Gorsuch, Tamara Johnson, Joseph Krivda, Victoria Smith
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry: Marcus Arieno, Pauline Bourbon, Douglas Rice, Mary Sherman, Zachary Terranova, Katherine Ward
Department of Mathematics: Bernadette Boyle, Sarah Cotter, Katelyn Grayshan
Department of Physics: Laura Kinnaman, Dipanjan Ray

School of Architecture

Architecture Program: Jennifer Griffin

Learn More >

Originally published by Amanda G. McKendree at al.nd.edu on June 28, 2011.

Student Affairs Honors Students with Leadership Awards

2011-06-15T16:09:00-04:00

The University of Notre Dame’s Division of Student Affairs recently recognized six students with leadership awards. Five were students in the College of Arts and Letters.

Ray Siegfried Award for Leadership Excellence

Kayla A. Bishop received this award, which is is given to a Notre Dame senior who exemplifies the qualities of the 1965 graduate and former Board of Trustees member who was known for his leadership, generosity, devotion to the Catholic faith, and affinity for athletics.

Bishop served as captain of Notre Dame’s women’s rugby, women’s boxing, and the Howard Hall football team, leading the Ducks to back-to-back football championships in 2009 and 2010. She frequently participated in daily Mass and weekly adoration and was involved in an Emmaus faith-sharing group.

The accountancy and theology major volunteered with the Early Childhood Development Center, the Read to a Child Program, Rebuilding Together, and Camp Scully, an overnight camp for troubled and economically disadvantaged youth.

Denny Moore Award for Excellence in Journalism

Lincroft, N.J., native Erica Pepitone won this award, which recognizes a graduating senior who exemplifies the qualities of the former Notre Dame associate vice president who was widely known for his personal integrity, character, commitment to the University, and writing ability.

Pepitone, an English and psychology major, served as copy editor, copy chief, and editor-in-chief of Scholastic magazine. Under her direction, the magazine’s issues featured thoughtful, well-written, and well-designed coverage of a variety of complex topics important to the Notre Dame community.

Pepitone also worked for the Writing Center and as a tutor for elementary school children. She plans to attend graduate school at Trinity College in Dublin.

Sister Jean Lenz, O.S.F., Leadership Award

This honor, given to a post-baccalaureate student who displays leadership in promoting a more diverse and inclusive campus community, was awarded to Jacqueline Pimentel-Gannon of Indianapolis.

Pimentel-Gannon dedicated two years of her life to work as a third grade teacher in Dallas, Texas as part of the Alliance for Catholic Education and served as an assistant rector in Pasquerilla West. In the last four years, she volunteered with South Bend’s Big Brother’s Big Sisters Program, Meals on Wheels, and La Casa de Amistad where she sponsored a Christmas giving tree for families through the Hispanic Law Student Association.

Working with Notre Dame’s Legal Aid Clinic, she spearheaded the Small Business Pro Bono Project that assists area small businesses with legal and business needs.

Pimentel-Gannon majored in economics, political science, and Spanish in the College of Arts and Letters, before completing her M.Ed. at Notre Dame in 2007. She became a quadruple-Domer with her joint M.B.A./J.D. degree, awarded in May.

Rev. A. Leonard Collins, C.S.C. Award

Chemical and biomolecular engineering major Nick Ruof was awarded this honor, which recognizes a graduating senior who makes a substantial personal effort to advance the interest of students at Notre Dame. The Fresno, Calif., native served as Carroll Hall senator, chair of the Residence Life Senate Committee, and chief of staff for Student Government.

In addition to spending two years lobbying for light installation on McGlinn Fields, Ruof also worked toward expanding student rights through the “du Lac” revision process, improving the dining hall experience, and ensuring student safety on campus.

Blessed Basil Moreau, C.S.C., Leadership Award

The award, established in 2010, is given to a graduating senior who embodies Blessed Father Moreau’s vision of educating heart and mind as well as a one who demonstrates a significant effort to advancing the Catholic character of the University. This year’s winner was Samuel Russ.

The theology and pre-professional studies major and Eagan, Minn., native served as a Resident Assistant in Carroll Hall, Notre Dame Encounter board member and team leader, Campus Ministry commissioner, PILLARS peer educator and Freshman Retreat leader. He also founded and was commissioner for the 24-hour Food Fast for Haiti.

Russ has also devoted an extensive amount of time to service work such as flood relief in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, volunteering at an orphanage in Mexico, and participating in an international summer project in Guatemala.

John W. Gardner Student Leadership Award

Management entrepreneurship major Gabrielle Tate of Orland Park, Ill., is the 2011 winner of this award, which honors a student who exemplifies the ideals of Notre Dame through volunteer service beyond the University community.

In her first year of study at Notre Dame, Tate discovered the Center for the Homeless in South Bend and began tutoring several young children. She went on to begin a Sunday Spanish class at the Center and assisted adult Center guests with GED preparation.

Tate, who also received a minor in education, schooling and society, taught physical education at St. Adalbert’s Catholic Grade School.

During the summer, Tate worked at a treatment center in Illinois analyzing the effectiveness of medical tests on autistic children as well as assisting with a class of lower-functioning children with autism. Tate went on to create The Puzzle Challenge, a campus event that raises autism awareness.

Serving as race director for three years for the Holy Half Marathon, Tate has helped raise more than $30,000 to benefit a wide range of charities. The 2011 race is estimated to have raised nearly $20,000, benefiting St. Adalbert’s, Michiana Down Syndrome and the Center for the Homeless.

Tate plans to take a full-time teaching position with Teach for America.

Learn More>

Originally published at newsinfo.nd.edu.

Darcia Narvaez and Daniel Lapsley Win Outstanding Book Award

2011-05-25T16:00:00-04:00

Notre Dame psychologists Darcia Narvaez and Daniel Lapsley have won a 2011 Outstanding Book Award for their edited work on the moral dimensions of selfhood and personality.

The award, from the American Educational Research Association’s Moral Development and Education Special Interest Group, is given annually to one book published during the previous three years. Winners are selected based on “research excellence and its practical application in the field of moral development and education.”

Co-edited by Narvaez and Lapsley, Personality, Identity, and Character: Explorations in Moral Psychology (Cambridge University Press, 2009), examines how notions such as self, identity, and personality intersect with moral formation.

Combining Disciplines

Lapsley, professor and chair in the Department of Psychology, is a specialist in adolescent development and educational and moral psychology. Narvaez, an associate professor in the department, focuses her research on moral cognition, moral development, and moral character.

“The fragmented nature of research on moral personality has been mostly a study of cognition without desires, rationality without brains, agents without contexts, selves without culture, traits without persons, persons without attachments, dispositions without development,” Lapsley says. “We wanted to change all that.”

Both scholars say combining insights from across disciplines is the key to further progress.

“We wanted to carve out space for a new field of study on the moral self that is deeply integrative across the domains of psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience,” Lapsley says, “and we asked renowned scholars from philosophy and sub-disciplines of psychology to help think it through with us.”

Lapsley called the award a pleasant surprise. “It is gratifying to learn that there is an appreciative audience for the book,” he says. “I am very proud of it—but the book is nothing without the superb contributions of these leading scholars, and so the honor is a deeply shared one.”

Furthering Their Research

In addition to the 2011 prize, Lapsley and Narvaez won the Outstanding Book Award in 2007 for their edited work Moral Development, Self, and Identity (Psychology Press, 2004). In 2009, Narvaez received the Outstanding Book Award for Handbook of Moral and Character Education (Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2008), which she co-edited with Larry P. Nucci from the University of California, Berkeley.

In his current research, Lapsley says he is exploring the use of Q-sort methods—the study of subjectivity and how people think about a topic—to capture the notion of moral identity.

Narvaez is examining the neurobiological roots of morality to attempt to explain the differences between individuals and their moral functioning.

“Early-life experience shapes the functioning of basic body and brain systems, influencing brain systems underlying morality,” she says. “With less than optimal care, people are more likely to develop a self-centered brain—easily stressed and focused on personal goals with minimal enjoyment of or sensitivity to social relationships.”

Narvaez is also working with Notre Dame anthropology Professor Agustín Fuentes to organize an October 2012 interdisciplinary symposium called Human Evolution and Human Development, which will address some of these same topics.

Learn More >

Originally published by Joanna Basile at al.nd.edu on May 25, 2011.

Students Win Undergraduate Research Honors

2011-05-16T16:03:00-04:00

College of Arts and Letters students made a strong showing at Notre Dame’s 4th annual Undergraduate Scholars Conference, which showcased nearly 270 research, scholarship, and creative projects from across the University.

At the May 6, 2011, event, senior history major and gender studies minor Robyn Grant won first prize in the Undergraduate Library Research Awards sponsored by Hesburgh Libraries and the Center for Undergraduate Scholarly Engagement.

Grant’s winning senior thesis, “But Who Will Do the Dishes? Negotiating Socialism with Femininity in Mujeres Magazine,” was advised by Jaime Pensado, an assistant professor in the Department of History. The project was also awarded the Gender Studies Program Genevieve D. Willis Thesis Prize.

The Undergraduate Library Research Award recognizes undergraduates who “demonstrate excellent research skills” and “incorporate library resources, collections, and services into their scholarly and creative projects.”

Erin Bolte, a junior majoring in biochemistry and Arabic, and Brigid Mangano, a senior French and art history major, each received honorable mentions. Both students are participants in the University’s Glynn Family Honors Program.

Bolte’s paper, “Review of Outcomes and Measurement Tools for Improvement in Behavior for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder,” was advised by Joshua Diehl, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology.

Mangano’s honorable mention was for “Guillaume Bodinier and the Meaning(s) of ‘Italianness’ in Nineteenth Century France.” Her advisor was Kathleen Pyne, a professor in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design.

The award for best paper submitted from a 10000- or 20000-level class went to Hannah Lin. She wrote “Leveling the Field: Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon” for a course in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre, where her faculty advisor was Assistant Professor Aaron Han Joon Magnon-Park.

Entries were evaluated by a cross-disciplinary group of faculty members and representatives from the Hesburgh Libraries. They selected the winners based on the following criteria:

intellectual merit
demonstration that the work meets the highest standards of its field,
understanding and application of principles of information literacy,
extensive and creative use of Notre Dame Library resources,
clarity of writing,
persuasiveness of argumentation,
depth of inquiry, and
organization of project material.

Learn More >

Originally published by Kate Cohorst at al.nd.edu on May 16, 2011.

Notre Dame Graduates Receive National Fellowships and Scholarships

2011-05-16T04:05:00-04:00

The Fulbright Exchange Program, National Science Foundation, and other national organizations have awarded postgraduate scholarships and fellowships to 16 members of the University of Notre Dame’s Class of 2011, 14 of whom are students in the College of Arts and Letters.

Two graduates received Fulbright research and study grants. Ann Weber, a history and theology major from Grand Junction, Colo., will go to Austria to research “Immigration and Issues of National Identity in EU Politics.” Weber spent part of last summer in Austria as well, conducting research for her senior thesis.

Andrew Mrugala, a mechanical engineering major from Las Vegas, will use his Fulbright research and study grant to investigate the “Effects of Healthcare Reform on the Mining Workforce in Poland.”

Five seniors in the College of Arts and Letters were awarded Fulbright English Teaching Assistantships.

Cherrica Li, a political science and economics major from Carmel, Ind., will go to Taiwan;
Jaime Cordes, an anthropology and Russian major from Raleigh, N.C., will go to Russia;
John Greil, a German and Program of Liberal Studies major from Hastings, Minn., will go to Germany;
Amanda Johnson, an American studies major from Omaha, Neb., will go to Poland; and
Virginia Varraveto, an English and Spanish major from Leawood, Kan., will go to Peru.

Rosary Abot, a philosophy and chemical engineering major from Sacramento; and Kayla Durcholz, a classics and Latin major from Warsaw, Ind., received Lilly Graduate Fellowships. Kristen Drahos of Roanoke, Va., was also awarded a Lilly Graduate Fellowship. She completed her B.A. in philosophy and theology in 2009 and is receiving her M.A. in theological studies this month.

The Lilly program supports outstanding students who are entering Ph.D. or equivalent graduate programs in humanities and the arts and who are interested in becoming teacher-scholars at church-related universities in the United States.

Three seniors received National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships. They are:

Claire Brown, an anthropology major from Powell, Tenn.;
Jake Lussier, a computer science major from Manchester, N.H.; and
Kevin Mickey of Dublin, Ohio, who is a self-designed cognitive science major in the College of Arts and Letters.

Claire Reising, a Rolling Meadows, Ill., native who studied English, French, and journalism, received a French Government Teaching Assistantship to teach English conversation classes in France.

The Class of 2011 also includes two 2010 Truman Scholars, Elizabeth Simpson, a theology and peace studies major from Powell, Wyo., and Puja Parikh, a political science and psychology major from Fort Wayne, Ind.

The Truman scholarship is awarded to just 60 juniors nationwide each year, based on leadership potential, intellectual ability, and likelihood of “making a difference.” Winners receive graduate study funds, priority admission and supplemental financial aid at select institutions, leadership training, career and graduate school counseling, and internship opportunities within the federal government.

Learn More >

Originally published by Arts and Letters at al.nd.edu on May 16, 2011.