Last summer Dr. Jeff Adams and Dr. Ron Miller collaborated on an article illustrating a dialogue between a clinical and an experimental psychologist discussing the role science should/shouldn’t play:

• Adams, J. B., & Miller, R. B. (in press). Bridging Psychology’s Scientist vs. Practitioner Divide: Fruits of a Twenty Year Dialogue. The Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology.

Dr. Susan Kuntz received the Joanne Rathgeb Award teaching award at the Saint Michael's Academic Convocation in January. The award citation given illustrated how Dr. Kuntz “achieves that elusive quality of genuine student-teacher rapport: showing students she greatly cares both for their learning and for them as individuals.” The citation further described her as a person whose “gift for teaching is a natural extension of the remarkable person she is - a person of deep compassion, moral and intellectual courage, and a commitment to always work hardest for the students most in need.” She was recognized too for a career “molded and honed through years of committed study, research and practice.” Dr. Kuntz's recently published book, The Story of Alpha: 25 years of Reculturing, describes what students want in a good teacher, which are the very things, the citation read, that describe Sue and her teaching.

In December, Dr. Sharon Lamb began her focus group research in collaboration with the Vermont Approach, a five-year plan to prevent sexual violence in Vermont. As co-chair of the Changing Media Representations Committee of the Vermont Approach, she will be conducting 6 focus groups of stakeholders in Vermont with regard to the way sexual violence is represented in the media. She is focusing on news media at the start and the December focus group brought eight journalists to campus: Stewart Ledbetter of WCAX, Lauren Maloney of FOX 44, Fran Stoddard of VPT, Ken Picard of Seven Days, Sam Hemingway of the Burlington Free Press, Brent Curtis of the Rutland Herald, Mike Donoghue from Saint Michael's and the Associated Press, and Patty Daniels from VPR. Psychology major Rachael Thomas '10 assisted with the taping and organization of the conference. Saint Michael's Journalism professor, Dr. Traci Griffith, provided a talk on news and sexual violence.

Dr. David Boynton was elected to the Steering Committee for the New England Psychological Association (NEPA). The organization has been busy planning the fall 2009 meeting of NEPA, which is to be held at Worcester State in Massachusetts. The NEPA convention is the second day of a two-day convention that begins with the annual meeting of the North East Conference for the Teaching of Psychology (NECToP). NECToP is a small convention that involves presentations and workshops by master teachers that promote innovative teaching in psychology and the social sciences. The NEPA convention includes poster sessions and presentations that feature the research of Psi Chi students, regional researchers and professionals in psychology, and presentations by nationally-known scholars of psychology. NEPA recently accepted Saint Michael’s College’s invitation to host the NECToP/NEPA convention in the fall of 2010. This will be an excellent opportunity for Saint Michael’s students to directly experience a conference in psychology.

In August 2008, at the American Psychological Association Annual Meeting held in Boston, Dr. Ron Miller delivered an Invited Address to Division 24 of the APA, entitled, "Knowing Oneself ( and Others) Well: Grounding Clinical Knowledge in a Moral Imperative." Then on October 22-23, he was invited to be one of the six keynote speakers at an international conference at the University of Abertay Dundee (Scotland) on "Developing a Methodological Framework for Systematic Single-case Research in Counselling and Psychotherapy." His paper was entitled: "Doing Justice to the Case Study Method: The Moral Context of Clinical Knowledge." The conference was funded by the Economic and Social Science Research Council of the U.K. The conference was limited to 50 participants from North America, the U.K, and Europe. His work on these projects was aided by a sabbatical during the Fall term, 2008.

Dr. Dave Landers continues to serve as the “faculty blogger” http://smcblogs.typepad.com/dave/ and also Chairs the College’s Athletic Advisory Council. In addition to teaching his courses (Abnormal Psychology, Sports Psychology, Theories of Counseling) in the Psychology Department he also offers a very popular course for second semester seniors entitled: Men & Masculinities which brings together 15 men and 15 women one night a week for two and a half hours of interesting and intense discussion. Dave received a grant from the NE-10 to attend the NCAA National Convention in Washington, D.C. the week prior to the Inauguration and the Scholarly Colloquium’s theme this year was Paying the Price: Is Excellence in Sport Compatible with Good Health? In March he will be attended the Eastern Psychological Association national convention in Pittsburgh along with colleagues Carolyn Whitney and Ari Kirshenbaum. They took several psychology majors with them to this conference and he and Carolyn Whitney presented at the poster session on their work on Academic Achievement and Student-Athletes:

• Increased Academic Performance for Student-Athletes with Academic Mentors: A Three-Pronged Academic Mentoring Approach. Landers, D., & Whitney, C. (2009)

Dr. Renee Carrico presented her research at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development in Denver in April. Renee gave talk entitled “Visual feedback and object size in the control of infant reaching” as part of a symposium on infant perceptual-motor development.

Dr. Ari Kirshenbaum's achievements include:

Publication:

• Kirshenbaum, A.P., Brown, S., Hughes, D., & Doughty, A (2008). DRL schedules and nicotine administration: A systematic evaluation of dose and schedule requirement. Behavioural Pharmacology, 19(7) 683-697.

Presentations:

• Kirshenbaum, A.P., Schwarz, S., & Brown, S.J. (2009). Context-dependent perturbations in DRL schedule performance. Eastern Psychological Association, Annual Meeting.

• Jackson, E.J., Brown, S.J., Adamo, C., & Kirshenbaum A.P. (2009). Response disinhibition induced by nicotine administration I: Stop-task performance and sensitization. Eastern Psychological Association, Annual Meeting.

• Brown, S.J., Jackson, E.J., Adamo, C., Miltner, B., & Kirshenbaum A.P. (2009). Response disinhibition induced by nicotine administration II: VI-DRL performance and sensitization. Eastern Psychological Association, Annual Meeting.

• Adamo, C., Fuchs, J., & Kirshenbaum, A.P. (2009). Manipulations of motivation engender differential DRL-schedule performance. Eastern Psychological Association, Annual Meeting.

• Kirshenbaum, A.P., Brown, S.J., & Schwarz, S. (2008). Acute and chronic effects of nicotine on a tandem VI-DRL schedule. Division 28, American Psychological Association, Annual Convention.

• Schwarz, S., Brown, S.J.,& Kirshenbaum, A.P. (2008). A comparison of reinforcer magnitude and nicotine administration manipulations on DRL-schedule performance. Eastern Psychological Association, Annual Meeting.

• Brown, S.J., Schwarz, S., & Kirshenbaum, A.P. (2008). The effects of chronic versus acute dosing regimens of nicotine on impulsive behaviors in rats. Eastern Psychological Association, Annual Meeting.

In August Dr. Molly Millwood traveled to the annual convention of the American Psychological Association in Boston and presented her work entitled The Role of Attachment and Demand-Withdraw Communication in Marital and Maternal Distress during the Transition to Parenthood. The presentation was part of APA’s Division 35, Society for the Psychology of Women, poster session on Role, Cultural, and Developmental Challenges in the Lives of Women and Girls.

In October her article, "Demand-Withdraw Communication in Couples: An Attachment Perspective," was published in the Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy, Volume 7, number 4.

In July 2008 Dr. Tony Richardson and his collaborator, Marcia Collaer from Middlebury College, were awarded a $20,000 grant from the NASA Consortium Development Competition, for their project, "Spatial disorientation in virtual environments: peripheral vision and hormonal correlates." They are examining two questions related to learning in virtual reality environments. The first questions addresses whether greater peripheral vision enhances virtual simulation learning. Some research suggests that richer visual inputs, particularly with a wider field of view, improve orientation and navigation performance within virtual environments, and that an expanded field of view benefits women in particular. Their second question addresses the relationship between virtual navigation ability and the steroid hormones testosterone (T) and cortisol. Males outperform females on certain spatial tasks, and one model suggests that this sex difference relates to T action, at various points of life, in masculinizing the brain and cognitive development. Further evidence suggests that stress levels, as indexed via cortisol, may relate to the learning of spatial layouts, and that the nature of the relationship may vary with sex. During the summer of 2009 two students will be hired, one from Saint Michael's and one from Middlebury, to conduct the experiments. Students will split their time between both colleges, being mentored by both Tony Richardson and Marcia Collaer.

Dr. Melissa VanderKaay Tomasulo contributed to the publication:

• Patterson, S. M., VanderKaay, M. M., Shanholtzer, B. A., & Farrell, C. A. (2008). Influence of acute fluid hydration on stress-induced hemoconcentration and cardiovascular reactivity. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 31(4), 319-330.

Dr. Carolyn Whitney's achievements include:

Presentations at Eastern Psychological Association, Annual Conference, Pittsburgh, PA. March 2009

• Surrendering Problems to God Religious Coping Style and Correlates of Positive Well-being in College Students Murphy, M. & Whitney, C. (2009

• Needs to be Outdoors and Time Spent in Outdoor Activities: Subjective Happiness, Satisfaction with Life, and Mindfulness Among College Students.
  Gilmore, C. E., Whitney, C., & Schwarz, S. (2009)

• Social Support from Safe Adults and Positive Psychology Outcomes Among College Students. Whitney, C., & Gilmore, C.E. (2009)

• Increased Academic Performance for Student-Athletes with Academic Mentors: A Three-Pronged Academic Mentoring Approach. Landers, D., & Whitney, C. (2009)

• Attachment Style, Loneliness, and Coping Among College Students. Schwarz, S., Whitney, C., and Gilmore, C.E. (2009)

Presentation at the American Psychological Association, Annual Conference, August, 2009

• Measures of Positive Psychology and Volunteer Motivation Among College Students. Whitney, C., & Micheletto, M. (2009)

• Student-Athletes and Non-Athletes: Not So Different When it Comes to Volunteer Participation and Motivations to Volunteer. Micheletto, M., & Whitney, C. (2009)

Publication

• Amend, A., Whitney, C. A., Messuri, A., & Furukawa, H. (2009). A Modified Spanish Sequence for Students With Language-Based Learning Disabilities.
  Foreign Language Annals. (In press)