Department News Archive: 2009 | 2008
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Could Your Kid Really Have Painted That?
Angelina will be giving a 30 minute oral presentation on this research at the 5th International Conference On The Arts In Society in Sydney, Australia, to be held July 22-25, 2010. To view the abstract click here. |
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Psychological Benefits of Engaging in Art-Making for Children and Adults
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Grant awarded by the Faber Castell company entitled: Does Making Art Improve Mood in Young Children? A Comparison of Art-Making by Hand vs. by Computer
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Christina Leclerc's paper in APA manual
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Department of Psychology recruits four new faculty members The Psychology Department recruited a record number of new members of the faculty this year. According to Jim Russell, former chair, this is the largest number of faculty ever recruited in one year. Two beginning assistant professors, Sara Cordes and Sean MacEvoy, will begin fall 2009. A full-time adjunct, Jef Lamoureux, will begin at the same time. Another beginning assistant professor, Alexa Veenema, will begin fall 2010.
Left to right: Sara Cordes, Sean MacEvoy, Jef Lamoureux, and Alexa Veenema |
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Jim Russell's article one of the ten most cited
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Springer Early Career Achievement Award reception On July 31 the Psychology Department celebrated the American Psychological Association’s announcement that associate professor Elizabeth Kensinger is this year’s winner of the Springer Early Career Achievement Award for her research on age, emotion, and memory. Below, from left, are psychology professor and department chair Ellen Winner (back to camera), A&S interim dean David Quigley, Kensinger, and Patricia DeLeeuw, vice provost for faculties.
Since joining the Psychology Department in 2006, Elizabeth Kensinger, associate professor and director of the University’s Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory, has studied and written about how age and emotions influence the formation and retrieval of memories. She became interested in this field as a graduate student, and since then has conducted research supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Dana Foundation, among others. In dozens of articles and presentations, she has reported that emotions significantly influence whether and how people remember experiences, that an emotion’s positive or negative valence affects memories’ accuracy (negative emotions enhance accuracy), and that neural imaging techniques reveal physical changes in the brain indicative of a connection between strong emotions and memory. The American Psychological Association announced in July that she is the 2009 winner of the Springer Early Career Achievement Award in Research on Adult Development and Aging, “designed to honor an individual whose work has made significant early career contributions to understanding critical issues in the psychology of adult development and aging.” Above, at a July 31 Psychology Department celebration of the announcement, from left, are psychology professor and department chair Ellen Winner (back to camera), A&S interim dean David Quigley, Kensinger, and Patricia DeLeeuw, vice provost for faculties. |
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Lisa Feldman Barrett receives Pioneer Award Supplement
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Psychology grant funding grows In Fiscal Year 2009, our total direct expenditures were $1,524,000. This is almost a half a million dollars higher than for Fiscal Year 2008. In Fiscal Year 2004, our direct expenditures were under $600,000. This graph shows our sharp rise in funding from 2004-2009.
Psychology Department External Funding, Direct and Indirect, 2004-2009 |
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Department of Psychology recruits four new faculty members The Psychology Department recruited a record number of new members of the faculty this year. According to Jim Russell, former chair, this is the largest number of faculty ever recruited in one year. Two beginning assistant professors, Sara Cordes and Sean MacEvoy, will begin fall 2009. A full-time adjunct, Jef Lamoureux, will begin at the same time. Another beginning assistant professor, Alexa Veenema, will begin fall 2010. |
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Springer Early Career Achievement Award
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 Danielle Stolzenberg has accepted a postdoctoral position at the University of Virginia, where she will work with Dr. Emilie Rissman in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics. |
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BC Psychology Ph.D. program rises in US News rankings US News surveys graduate programs every four years through ratings by academics throughout the country. In 2002, BC Psychology was ranked 135th; in 2006, ranked 107; in the latest survey, 66th. Dean Robert Lay notified us today of “the Psych Ph.D. Program’s magnificent rise in the US News rankings.” In analyzing the results across academic departments at BC, Dean Lay stated, “Every university of any merit has a Psychology Ph.D. program, so that if we go by percentile rank, our Psych Ph.D. has tended to do well relative to the larger pack. With the new ranking of #66, we must be among the top 5-10% of Ph.D. programs...because the number of APA-accredited Psych Ph.D. programs was 1,039 for 1999-2000.” Dean Lay remarked, “Moving up dramatically in academic reputation is the Psychology Ph.D. Program, which jumped 41 ranks from four years ago and 69 ranks from eight years ago! The Program’s peer assessment rating improved from 2.6 to 3.0 to 3.2 over the same eight-year period. The Psych Ph.D. Peer Assessment rating is now tied with the Economics PhD Program on the same five-point scale. The competition among top psychology programs is obviously very intense among a large number of programs nationally.” |
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Psychology Undergraduate Research Conference On May 4, the Psychology Department held its annual PURC, the Psychology Undergraduate Research Conference.
Jenny Wong receives the 2009 Peter Gray Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Psychology.
Brett Ford presents her poster, What Do People Want to Feel? Emotion Regulation as a Function of Utility (advisor Maya Tamir).
These two presenters are Jenny Wong with Characterizing Memory Distortions as a Function of Time and Emotionality (advisor Elizabeth Kensinger) and Colleen Maher with Exploring the Mind of the Emerald Tiger: Shadowing Ireland’s First Neuropsychologist (advisor Gene Heyman). |
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Pictured below are the four organizers for the 8th Annual Graduate Research Day. From left to right, they are Shannon Snapp, Kate Hudspeth, Christina Reppucci, and Caren Walker. Graduate Research Day is a one-day research conference at which students in the Department of Psychology graduate programs present their ongoing research to the Boston College community.
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New additions to Behavioral Neuroscience
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Pychology students receive Professional Excellence Awards Two Psychology graduate students, Katherine Mickley and Danielle Stolzenberg, were awarded Professional Excellence Awards at a ceremony April 27th. The ceremony was sponsored by the Office of the Provost and Dean of Faculties. |
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Jill Waring admitted to Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience
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New Concentration in Clinical Psychology The Psychology Department is now offering a concentration in Clinical Psychology. |
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Noam Chomsky's talk a great success
Front Row: Noam ChomskyVIDEO FROM FRONT ROWChomsky discusses American politics before a standing-room-only crowd. |
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Alan Scott accepts position at Elon University
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Jef Lamoureux to Join Psychology Department
Jeffrey Lamoureux will join our department as an Adjunct Assistant Professor this fall. He received his Ph.D. from Duke University in 1998. "My research interests center on the mechanisms by which animals learn predictive relationships in their environment (e.g., Pavlovian and operant conditioning). Using rodent models, I investigate both the circumstances under which animals learn these predictive associations, as well as the neural systems that underly the process. Of particular interest to me are the mechanisms by which animals use contextual cues to retrieve 'ambiguous' memories, and response recovery phenomena observed following extinction procedures (i.e., renewal, reinstatement)." |
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Sara Cordes to Join Psychology Department
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Noam Chomsky to Visit Boston College
February 10th |
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Thalia Goldstein wins travel award
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Angelina Hawley presented her poster, "Could Your Kid Really Have Painted That? Distinguishing Between Paintings by Abstract Expressionist Masters and Paintings by Children, Chimps, Monkeys and Elephants," at the First Copenhagen Neuroaesthetics Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark from September 24-26th.
Jennifer Drake will be presenting her research on the affective benefits of art for children and adults. This presentation is part of a symposium on Children's Engagement in Art and its Educational Context. The symposium will be presented at the annual meeting of the British Psychological Society in Stratford-upon-Avon, England in April 2010.
Christina Leclerc’s 2008 paper entitled 
Jim Russell's article, "Evidence for a three-factor theory of emotions," published in 1977 in the Journal of Research in Personality, was 
Lisa Feldman Barrett has received a Pioneer Award supplement for the project titled "Emotions are emergent events constrained by affective and conceptual processes." Congratulations on receiving this stimulus funding!
Elizabeth Kensinger is the 2009 recipient of the Springer Early Career Achievement Award in Research on Adult Development and Aging. This award is given annually by the American Psychological Association Division of Adult Development and Aging to "an individual whose work has made significant early career contributions to understanding critical issues in the psychology of adult development and aging."
Congratulations to Jennifer Fugate on having her postdoctoral NRSA funded by NIMH.
Remco Bredewold will join the Psychology Department at the same time and will serve as a lab coordinator and technician for the Behavioral Neuroscience area.
Jill Waring was admitted to the competitive Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience, which will be held at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Noam Chomsky addressed Psi Chi, our undergraduate psychology honors society, about the new American administration and its implications. Students filled Gasson 100 to overflowing to hear a critique of the American electoral system and politics. Co-presidents Joy Batra, Brett Ford, and Larissa Jones are congratulated on their organization of an important event.
Alan Scott has accepted an offer to become an assistant professor at Elon University in North Carolina. Elon is a fairly small (6000 students), private, largely undergraduate institution located between the Greensboro-Winston-Salem and Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill metro areas. It has historically been a teaching focused institution, but has in the past 10 years or so begun a concerted effort to transition to more of a teacher-scholar model without losing sight of its long-standing mission. Alan will be able to continue both primary programs of research he became involved with while at BC, and the Elon psych department has a strong record of research involvement on the part of their undergraduate students.
Thalia has won a student travel award from the Society for Research in Child Development and will be presented with this award at the awards ceremony of the SRCD convention on April 3, 2009.