|
Psi Chi & Psychology Club
 Both the
Psi Chi Honor Society and the Psychology Club are up and running
full tilt this new academic year.
The President and Vice-President of Psi Chi
carried their flag during the Academic Convocation and the
Inauguration of President John J. Neuhauser in September.
Psi Chi members have also set up a workshop
with Chris Clary, co-director of the Student Resource Center, to provide
students with
Psi Chi officers from left to right: Maribeth Fonda,
up-to-date, comprehensive infor-
Pam Kunar, Dr. Boynton, Jenna Katz and Melissa Gray
mation on graduate schools in
psychology. This was an
extremely well-attended workshop a year ago and this year we hope to
have some local alumni who are pursuing graduate psychology work be
a part of the workshop.
 The
Psychology Club held its first meeting with 26 students attending. Seth Brown and Anne Maher are serving as
co-presidents this year and the rest of the officers will be
selected in the next few weeks. Students were asked to identify
their top three areas of interest, with an eye on one workshop/presentation each month. The
top votes were for a visit to a psychiatric hospital,
(last year, thanks to the invitation of Judge
Rosemary Minnehan, we were able to take six
Seth Brown and Anne Maher students to visit Bridgewater State Hospital in
Massachusetts),
a presentation on abnormal psychology, a counselors/counseling
workshop and movie nights, as well as talks on future
careers in psychology, forensic psychology, child development and
personality profiles (the popularity of CSI and Criminal Minds on
television is NOT lost on our students). We will finalize our plans
and hope to engage the volunteer efforts of some of our alumni and
our current faculty to meet the requests from members of the
Psychology Club.
New Virtual Reality Lab
 The
Psychology Department has a new immersive virtual reality (VR) system
consisting of five parts: a computer; VR software; a head mounted
display (HMD); a head orientation tracking device and a body
position tracking device. The HMD projects the virtual environment
binocularly to small screens in front of the users eyes; the head
orientation tracking device and body position tracking device sense
head movements and position changes which update the VR software on
Professors Tony Richardson and Melissa
VanderKaay
the computer. The result is the demonstrating
some
equipment in the VR lab.
experience of being “immersed”
within a computer generated environment. Movement is natural and
the sense of being within a different world compelling. This system
can display any world dictated by the researcher and collect data
(e.g., orientation, position, reaction time) for future analysis. One current project focuses on differences between human navigation
in immersive virtual environments compared to navigation in desktop
virtual environments (e.g., environments experienced from a
traditional flat screen without body movement). Another student
project is examining the relationship between male and female
testosterone levels and navigational performance. Since this is a
general purpose system, many other research areas might be studied
such as gambling behavior, social interaction or phobia
desensitization (e.g., acrophobia or agoraphobia).
|
A note to our alumni:
The Psychology
Department is proud of the many accomplishments our alumni go on to
achieve in the
field of psychology. Our faculty continually strive to prepare our current majors for
similar success. We've seen that one key component to
doing this is through connecting students with alumni. There
are many ways alumni can volunteer their time to work with students,
such as giving lectures in your area of expertise. We also
welcome suggestions from you about how you might be interested in enhancing our
students' educational experiences. If you'd like to know more,
please contact me at
dlanders@smcvt.edu.
Thank you!
Sincerely,
Dave Landers |
Return to main page
|
|
