Outstanding mentors motivate a new generation of geropsychologists

Margaret Gatz, PhD, and Mary Ann Parris Stephens, PhD, are the winners of two mentoring awards--the Master Mentor Award and the Mentor Award, respectively--presented by APA's Div. 20 (Adult Development and Aging) and the Retirement Research Foundation.

The awards recognize psychology professors whose enthusiasm for geropsychology has motivated students to enter the field. The Master Mentor Award honors mentors who have been full professors for 10 years or more, while the Mentor Award reveres newer mentors or mentors working with undergraduates.

"Our primary objective is to honor people who have not only influenced the field directly, but who have influenced their students to influence the field," says Robin West, PhD, one of the award's coordinators.

Both Gatz, a professor of psychology at the University of Southern California, and Stephens, a professor of psychology at Kent State University, are known for their generosity of time and resources, outstanding teaching skills and gift for mentoring. Gatz's students and mentees described her as an "unparalleled resource." Gatz is not only an endless source of professional contacts and advice, they say, but approachable, tireless, and above all, selfless.

"We have repeatedly discovered that she has seen to the instrumental needs of her students--such as upgrading computer equipment and ensuring financial support--before her own," say students who wrote to Div. 20 in support of Gatz's nomination.

Stephens's mentees and students say her passion for geropsychology and aging research is contagious, and that her concern for students' professional and personal well-being makes her a good mentor.

"Mary Ann is tenacious in her commitment to her students' training," says former student Sarah L. Clark, PhD, now a geropsychology fellow at the Cleveland Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

For more information on the Div. 20 mentoring awards, visit the division's web site at www.iog.wayne.edu/APADiv20/mentor.htm. Nomination letters for the 2000 mentor awards are due in March.

--J. Chamberlin



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