2004 APA Education Leadership Conference

Applying Psychological Science to Education in Psychology

Scheduled Speakers

Joshua Aronson is associate professor of psychology and education at New York University. He received his PhD in 1992 from Princeton University. Before coming to NYU, he taught and conducted research the University of Texas and at Stanford University. Aronson’s research focuses on the social and psychological influences on academic achievement. Aronson is most widely known for his research on minority student achievement, research which offers a strong challenge to traditional, genetic explanations of why African Americans and Latinos perform less well on tests of intelligence than their White counterparts. Aronson and his colleagues’ research shows how stereotypes that allege lower ability among these groups depresses Black and Latino students’ test and school performance.

He has authored numerous chapters and scholarly articles on this work and is the Editor of Improving Academic Achievement: Impact of Psychological Factors on Education (Academic Press). His current work focuses on methods of boosting the learning and test performance of minority youth. Aronson has received numerous awards and grants for his research including Early Career awards from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues and the National Science Foundation, and the G. Stanley Hall Award from the American Psychological Association. He is currently Co-director (with C. Steele) of the National Task Force on the Achievement Gap at NYU.

Victor Benassi received his PhD in psychology from the City University of New York. He is Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of New Hampshire. He was chair of his department from 1989 to 1998. He served as Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and then as Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies between 1998 and 2003. Since arriving at UNH in 1982, he has taught courses in general psychology, research methods and statistics, social behavior, judgment and belief, depression, and abnormal behavior. He has led his department’s program that prepares psychology doctoral students for faculty positions. The department received honorable mention recognition from APA in 2004 for developing, implementing, and disseminating its innovative graduate education program (http://www.unh.edu/psychology/announcements/Honorable_mentions.mht).

Benassi received the American Psychological Foundation Distinguished Teaching of Psychology Award in 2003, the College of Liberal Arts Lindberg Outstanding Scholar/Teacher Award in 1994, and the UNH Excellence in Teaching Award in 1988. He has served on or chaired many university committees over the years (e.g., Teaching Excellence Program Advisory Committee, University Commission on Graduate Education, University Faculty Awards Committee, Administrative Services Redesign Planning Team). Along with Drs. Lee Seidel and Harry Richards, Benassi developed UNH’s Academic Program in College Teaching and Preparing Future Faculty Program, operated through the Graduate School and the Center for Teaching Excellence. UNH received the Theodore M. Hesburgh Award for Faculty Development to Enhance Undergraduate Teaching: Certificate of Excellence in 2002 in recognition of the impact of its academic program in college teaching. Benassi's research and publications focus on human judgment and belief, especially related to personal control over life events. He served two terms on the editorial board of American Sociological Association's Social Psychology Quarterly.


John D. Bransford joined the faculty of the University of Washington in Seattle in 2003. He holds the title of the James W. Mifflin University Professorship and Professor of Education. Prior to this time he was Centennial Professor of Psychology and Education and Co-Director of the Learning Technology Center at Vanderbilt University. Early works by Bransford and his colleagues in the 1970s included research in the areas of human learning, memory and problem solving, and helped shape the "cognitive revolution" in Psychology. Author of seven books and hundreds of articles and presentations, Bransford is an internationally renowned scholar in cognition and technology.

In 1984 Bransford was asked by the Dean of Peabody College at Vanderbilt to help begin a Learning Technology Center that would focus on education. The Center had grown from 7 people in 1984 to approximately 100 by 1999. During that time, Bransford and his colleagues developed and tested a number of innovative computer, videodisc, CD Rom, and Internet programs for mathematics, science, and literacy. Examples include the Jasper Woodbury Problem Solving Series in Mathematics, The Scientists in Action Series, and the Little Planet Literacy Series. Many of these programs are being used in schools throughout the world.

Bransford and his colleagues have won numerous awards. His PhD dissertation won honorable mention in the national "Creative Talent Awards" Contest; several of his published articles (co-authored with colleagues) have won "article of the year" awards in the areas of science education, technology, design, and theories of transfer. The Little Planet Literacy Series, which Bransford helped develop, has won major awards including the 1996 Technology and Learning Award and the 1997 Cody award for Best Elementary Curriculum from the Software Publishers Association. Bransford received the Sutherland Prize for Research at Vanderbilt, has been elected to the National Academy of Education, and was awarded the Thorndike award for 2001.

Bransford served as co-chair of several National Academy of Science committees that wrote How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School (1999) and How People Learn, Bridging Research and Practice (1999). He is currently serving as Co Chair of another National Academy of Science committee as well as a National Academy of Education Committee. He is on the International Board of Advisors for Microsoft’s Technology and Learning program, and has worked with the Gates Foundation to develop technology-enhanced workshops that link learning and leadership.

Frank L. Collins, Jr. received his PhD in 1980 from Auburn University and has served on the faculty at West Virigina University, Rush Presbyterian St. Luke's Medical Center (Chicago), and Oklahoma State University where he has been the Director of Clinical Training for 15 years. Dr. Collins currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Council of University Directors of Clinical Training and is a member of the Committee on Accreditation.




Rhea Farberman is the Executive Director for Public and Member Communications at the American Psychological Association. In her position she directs the Association's public education and media relations programs, serves as the Association’s national spokesperson, runs its in-house publications department and is the Executive Editor of The Monitor on Psychology, APA's monthly newsmagazine.

In the winter of 2001, Farberman directed the launch of APA’s national violence prevention campaign including public service ads built around the tag – What a Child Learns About Violence A Child Learns For Life. In 1997, Farberman and APA won a PRSA Silver Anvil award for "Talk to Someone Who Can Help", a public education campaign designed to increase the public's awareness of the value of psychological services.

Prior to joining APA, Farberman was a self-employed consultant working primarily on federal public information and education projects including the 1990 Census, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services health education and prevention programs, and White House Conferences and Councils.

An accredited member of the Public Relations Society of America, Farberman has served on the Board of Directors of PRSA's health care academy. She is an honors graduate of The American University's School of Communications and completed graduate studies in public relations and publications management at The George Washington University.

Nadya Fouad is a professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) and training director of the Counseling Psychology program there. She was President of the Society of Counseling Psychology from 2000-2001, and is chair-elect of the Council of Counseling Psychology Training Programs. She has published articles and chapters on cross-cultural vocational assessment, career development, interest measurement, cross-cultural counseling and race and ethnicity. She has served as co-chair (with Patricia Arredondo) of the writing and implementation team that developed the Guidelines on Multicultural Education, Training, Research, Practice, and Organizational Change for Psychologist, which was published in the American Psychologist in May 2003. She chaired the Task Force on Women in Academe for the American Psychological Association and also chaired the UWM Task Force on the Status of Women in 2000-2001. The changes resulting from the recommendations of that task force helped UWM to become recognized as one of the best workplaces for women in southeastern Wisconsin by Milwaukee Magazine.

Eileen Gambrill is Hutto Patterson Professor of Social Welfare at the University of California at Berkeley. She received her PhD in Social Work and Psychology from the University of Michigan. She had been a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford, Tel Aviv University, and was a Benjamin Meeker Fellow, School for Social Policy, University of Bristol, England (May-July, 1999). She is a licensed psychologist. She is a Fellow in APA and currently represents Division 25: Behavior Analysis on the APA Council on Representatives. Gambrill served as Editor-in-Chief of Social Work Research and Abstracts and as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Social Work Education. She has received two Pro Humanitate Literary Awards from the North American Resource Center for Child Welfare. Her research interests include professional decision making, evidence-based practice and the role of critical thinking within this and the ethics of helping. Publications include Critical thinking in clinical practice (2nd Ed. in preparation with Wiley), Controversial issues in social work ethics, values, and obligations (with R. Pruger, Allyn & Bacon, 1997); Social work practice: A critical thinker’s guide (Oxford, 1997) (2nd Ed. in press); Critical thinking for social workers: Exercises for the helping professions (with Len Gibbs, 2nd Ed., 1999, Pine Forge Press). Recent articles and chapters include: Evidence based practice: An alternative to authority based practice, Families in Society (1999), The role of critical thinking in evidence based practice in P. Allen-Meares & C. Garvin (Eds.), The handbook of social work direct practice (Sage, 2000), and Making practice decisions: Is what’s good for the goose good for the gander?, Ethical Human Sciences and Services, 2002, 4, 31-46.

Richard Gonzalez received his PhD in 1990 from Stanford University. He is currently at the University of Michigan, and is Chair of the Department of Psychology. He has joint appointments in Marketing and Statistics; he is also a research professor with the Research Center for Group Dynamics. His research areas include judgment and decision making, psychology and law, medical decision making, cultural psychology, statistics, mathematical modeling, and research methods. He is completing a graduate level statistics book and is beginning a new book on research methodology.

Diane F. Halpern is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Berger Institute for Work, Family, and Children at Claremont McKenna College. She has won many awards for her teaching and research, including the 2002 Outstanding Professor Award from the Western Psychological Association, the 1999 American Psychological Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching, 1996 Distinguished Career Award for Contributions to Education given by the American Psychological Association, the California State University’s State-Wide Outstanding Professor Award, the Outstanding Alumna Award from the University of Cincinnati, the Silver Medal Award from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, the Wang Family Excellence Award, and the G. Stanley Hall Lecture Award from the American Psychological Association.

Diane is the author of several books: Thought and Knowledge: An Introduction to Critical Thinking (4th ed., 2003), Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking (with Heidi Riggio, 2003), Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities (3rd ed., 2000), Enhancing Thinking Skills in the Sciences and Mathematics (1992), Changing College Classrooms (1994), Student Outcomes Assessment (1987), and States of Mind: American and Post-Soviet Perspectives on Contemporary Issues in Psychology (co-edited with Alexander Voiskounsky). Her most recent effort is co-edited with Susan Murphy, entitled From Work-Family Balance to Work-Family Interaction: Changing the Metaphor (2004). She has written approximately 200 journal articles and book chapters. Diane has served as president of the Western Psychological Association, APA Division 2: The Society for the Teaching of Psychology, and APA Division 1: General Psychology. She co-chaired the Education Work Group of the American Psychological Society with Milton Hakel. She recently chaired a conference on “Applying the Science of Learning to the University and Beyond: Cognitive, Social, and Motivational Factors” that was funded by grants from the Spencer Foundation and Marshall-Reynolds Trust. She presented the outcomes from the conference to the White House Office of Science and Technology and the Science Committee of the US House of Representatives and served as a primary author on the U.S. Department of Education’s Goals 2000. In February 2003, Diane co-chaired “Leadership in Work/Family Balance”, a conference held at Claremont McKenna College and co-sponsored by the Kravis Leadership Institute.

Diane developed an international perspective on contemporary issues through her work in Moscow as a Fulbright Scholar, in Bellagio, Italy as a Rockefeller Foundation Scholar-in-Residence, in Mexico as a visiting professor at Instituto Technologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, in Turkey as a visiting professor at Bogazici University, and in Hong Kong, where she served as a consultant to the Board of Education in a major effort to restructure educational policies. Diane served for many years on the Technical Advisory Committee for the Graduate Record Exam and as a Commissioner for the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). Diane has served on the editorial boards of a wide range of journals, Brain and Cognition, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, and Journal of Applied Psychology. This year, Diane is serving as President of the American Psychological Association.

Christian Schunn received his PhD in Cognitive Psychology from Carnegie Mellon University in 1995 under David Klahr, building models of the cognitive processes underlying scientific reasoning. He then was a postdoc at CMU with John Anderson and Lynne Reder. From 1998 to 2001, he was an Assistant Professor in the Applied Cognitive program in the Psychology Department at George Mason University. Since 2001, he is now a Research Scientist at the Learning Research and Development Center, and an Assistant Professor of Psychology, Cognitive Studies in Education, and Intelligent Systems at the University of Pittsburgh. Among other projects, he is the PI of a Mellon Foundation grant to study the impact of a reciprocal evaluation web system on psychology undergraduate writing ability, and a co-PI on a $35M NSF grant to improve math and science ability K-12 systemwide in large urban school districts. More generally, his current research examines complex forms of expertise, building models of authentic practice in science and engineering, and applying those models of expertise and authentic practice to improve science education, K-20. His past research included the development of intelligent tutoring systems, collaborative technologies, and theories of strategy selection.

Robert J. Sternberg is IBM Professor of Psychology and Education and Director of the Center for the Psychology of Abilities, Competencies, and Expertise at Yale. This Center is dedicated to the advancement of theory, research, practice, and policy advancing the notion of intelligence as developing expertise—as a construct that is modifiable and capable, to some extent, of development throughout the life span. The Center seeks to have an impact on science, on education, and on society. Sternberg also was the 2003 President of the American Psychological Association.

Sternberg received a PhD from Stanford University in 1975 and a BA summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, with honors with exceptional distinction in psychology, from Yale University in 1972. He also holds honorary doctorates from the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain; the University of Leuven, Belgium; the University of Cyprus; and the University of Paris V, France.

Sternberg is the author of over 950 journal articles, book chapters, and books, and has received over $18 million in government and other grants and contracts for his research. The central focus of his research is on intelligence, creativity, and wisdom, and he also has studied love and close relationships as well as hate. This research has been conducted in five different continents.

Sternberg is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Association (in 14 divisions), the American Psychological Society, the Connecticut Psychological Association, the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters, the International Association for Empirical Aesthetics, the Laureate Chapter of Kappa Delta Pi, and the Society of Experimental Psychologists. He has won many awards from APA, AERA, APS, and other organizations. These awards include the Arthur W. Staats Award from the American Psychological Foundation and the Society for General Psychology, the E. L. Thorndike Award for Career Achievement in Educational Psychology Award, the Distinguished Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology, and Boyd R. McCandless Award from APA; the Palmer O. Johnson, Research Review, Outstanding Book, and Sylvia Scribner Awards from AERA; the James McKeen Cattell Award from APS; the Distinguished Lifetime Contribution to Psychology Award from the Connecticut Psychological Association; the International Award of the Association of Portuguese Psychologists; the Cattell Award of the Society for Multivariate Experimental Psychology; the Award for Excellence of the Mensa Education and Research Foundation; the Distinction of Honor SEK, from the Institucion SEK (Madrid); the Sidney Siegel Memorial Award of Stanford University; and the Wohlenberg Prize of Yale University. He has held a Guggenheim Fellowship, and Yale University Senior and Junior Faculty Fellowships as well as an NSF Graduate Fellowship. He also has held the Honored Visitor Fellowship of the Taiwan National Science Council and the Sir Edward Youde Memorial Visiting Professorship of the City University of Hong Kong. He has been listed in the Esquire Register of outstanding men and women under 40 and was listed as one of 100 top young scientists by Science Digest. He has been president of the Divisions of General Psychology, Educational Psychology, Psychology and the Arts, and Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology of the APA and has served as Editor of the Psychological Bulletin and is Editor of Contemporary Psychology. Sternberg is most well known for his theory of successful intelligence, investment theory of creativity (developed with Todd Lubart), theory of thinking styles as mental self-government, balance theory of wisdom, and for his triangular theory of love and his theory of love as a story. His most recent theory is the WICS theory of leadership.

Cynthia Sturm is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Portland. She has provided training and ethics consultation to mental health professionals, agencies, and hospitals in the Pacific Northwest since 1985.

She has developed continuing professional education courses for licensed psychologists in the areas of professional ethics and psychotherapy. As an ethics educator, Dr. Sturm takes a proactive approach to enhancing ethical awareness and decision making skills in clinical practice, and incorporates experiential methods to promote the application of ethical knowledge. She creates a supportive and collaborative atmosphere for dialogue about complex ethical-legal issues encountered by practicing psychologists. She has been an APA-approved CE sponsor since 2001.

Dr. Sturm has served as a member and past chair of the Oregon Psychological Association Ethics Committee. She has taught Professional Ethics graduate courses at Pacific University School of Professional Psychology and Lewis and Clark College.

Dr. Sturm currently serves as the APA Council representative for the Oregon Psychological Association. She also chairs the APA Committee on Professional Practice and Standards.