American Psychological Foundation
APF strives to meet $20,000 challenge grant
The American Psychological Foundation (APF) successfully met the first part of a challenge grant set forth by Barbara Golden, PhD, last October. Golden gave APF $10,000 for achieving the challenge's goal of raising $40,000 in 2006.
Now APF is on its way to meeting the second part of Golden's original challenge: If APF raises $30,000 by the end of April 2007, Golden will give APF an additional $10,000.
Golden, a Chicago-based psychologist and member of APF's Advancement Committee, is particularly interested in APF's work on psychology's role in violence prevention and intervention. She hopes her challenge will stimulate donations and continued work in the area.
Golden serves on the Board of Directors for the Raymond F. Kravis Center of the Performing Arts Inc., in West Palm Beach, Fla. Her generosity ensures APF's ability to improve human lives through psychology.
For more information, contact APF Assistant Director Elizabeth Merck at E-mail .
APF awards COGDOP graduate research scholarships
APF and the Council of Graduate Departments of Psychology (COGDOP) presented 13 Graduate Research Scholarships in 2004.
The following are the top recipients:
Laura Knouse, a fifth-year graduate student in clinical psychology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, won the $3,000 Ruth G. and Joseph D. Matarazzo Scholarship. Her research interests include cognitive factors in adult attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and the way these symptoms affect functioning. She uses a meta-memory perspective to identify effective academic interventions for adult students. Her other projects address the self-report assessment of ADHD in adults.
Sarah Palyo, a sixth-year graduate student at the University at Buffalo of the State University of New York, won the $2,000 Clarence J. Rosecrans Scholarship. She has completed two original research projects examining factors that maintain post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and chronic pain in the aftermath of traumatic car accidents. To extend her PTSD research, her dissertation will use an analogue trauma paradigm to examine the hardiness of the trajectory of post-trauma symptoms over time.
APF invites all graduate departments of psychology in good standing with COGDOP to nominate candidates each year for these scholarships, which may be used by students to pay for research costs, travel to a scientific meeting and books and supplies. For more information, visit the American Psychological Foundation.
The following students each won $1,000 COGDOP scholarships:
Sarah Frenkiel-Fishman is a fourth-year graduate student in developmental and clinical psychology at Concordia University. She has focused her doctoral research on longitudinal associations between potential precursor abilities of Theory of Mind (ToM) in infancy and the more developed form of ToM abilities seen in the preschool years, as well as on young autistic children's ability to distinguish animate beings and inanimate objects.
Ilke O¨ztekin, a fourth-year graduate student in the cognition and perception program at New York University, studies the cognitive and neural mechanisms involved in information retrieval from verbal working memory. Her dissertation is investigating the underlying mechanisms that lead to individual differences in working-memory capacity.
Katherine Karlsgodt, a sixth-year graduate student in cognitive neuroscience at the University of California, Los Angeles, investigates neural function during working memory in schizophrenia. Karlsgodt studies chronic patients with schizophrenia and their unaffected co-twins, patients experiencing their first schizophrenic episode and patients in the prodromal phase. Her current research involves looking at the relationship between behavioral performance and the functional magnetic resonance imaging signal.
Jeffrey D. Karpicke, a fifth-year graduate student in cognitive psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, is investigating factors that promote learning and long-term retention of information, and how people monitor and regulate their own learning in educational contexts.
Meghan McAuliffe is a fifth-year graduate student in the clinical psychology program at the University of Delaware. Her primary research interests include peer relations and aggressive behavior in children; her dissertation explores classroom contextual influences on children's peer relationships.
Jenny Su, a sixth-year graduate student attending the University of Minnesota, conducts research in the area of emotion regulation. She is particularly interested in comparing the effects of emotional suppression on well-being in Asians born and raised in their native countries and Asians born and raised in North America.
Lisa Christian, a sixth-year graduate student in clinical health psychology at The Ohio State University, is interested in immune mediators linking stress and perinatal health outcomes. Her research examines associations between stress and inflammatory immune responses during pregnancy.
Matthew C. Hocking is a fourth-year clinical child psychology graduate student at the University of Alabama. He investigates stress and coping processes in children and families facing medical illnesses. Currently, he is examining the effects of active coping strategies in children with chronic abdominal pain and the influence of executive function and attention regulation on coping with chronic episodic pain.
Elizabeth J. Rahn is a second-year graduate student in neuroscience and behavior at the University of Georgia. She is studying the therapeutic effects of cannabinoids-synthetic cannabis-like compounds-on neurotoxicity and the pathological pain experienced by people undergoing chemotherapy.
Beth Mechlin, a third-year graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is interested in ethnic differences in pain perception. Her research focuses on the biological and psychosocial factors affecting African Americans' experience of chronic and clinical pain.
Lisa M. Sontag is a third-year developmental psychology graduate student at the University of Florida. Her research focuses on adolescent development from a biopsychosocial orientation. In particular, she explores how peer relations, stress reactivity, pubertal timing and coping contribute to healthy adjustment and emotional and behavioral problems. Currently she is investigating how peer relationships influence psychosocial development during the middle school years.
Apply for clinical health psychology award
APF seeks nominations for the $1,000 Timothy Jeffrey Memorial Award, which recognizes an outstanding commitment to clinical health psychology by a full-time provider of direct clinical services.
Louise Jeffrey, PhD, established the award in 1999 to honor her late husband, a clinical health psychologist.
Nominees must spend a minimum of 15-20 hours a week in direct, face-to-face patient assessment or therapy, in individual or group settings. Applicants must be fully licensed clinical health psychologists and members of APA and Div. 38 (Health). The deadline for applications is May 1. Nomination letters should describe the nominee's practice, professional activities and commitment to the field. Nominations must be accompanied by a current curriculum vitae, at least one letter of support from a professional, nonpsychologist colleague (APF will not consider letters from students or supervisees) and one letter from a psychologist colleague. Self-nominations are welcome, and APF encourages nominators to include a description of a clinical case in which the nominee's work has had a particular impact on an individual, family or group. For more information, visit the American Psychological Foundation.
Div. 16 offers student travel funds
Div. 16 (School) and APF request applications for the 2007 Paul E. Henkin Student Travel Award. Up to $1,000 in grants is available to student members of Div. 16 to attend APA's 2007 Annual Convention in San Francisco, Aug. 17-20.
Winners may use the funds to pay for convention registration, lodging and transportation costs only.
APF and Div. 16 will consider the applicant's demonstrated potential to make an outstanding contribution to the field of school psychology; their accomplishments and research; communication skills; community involvement; commitment to working in public schools and evidence of knowledge of the demands of the field of school psychology and the value of continuing professional development.
The deadline for applications is April 15. Applicants should submit the following materials online at Henkin Student Travel Award: an application form, one letter of recommendation, a 500-word essay and a curriculum vitae.
Submit pediatric injury research proposals
APF and Div. 54 (Society of Pediatric Psychology) request applications for the 2007 Lizette Peterson Homer Memorial Injury Research Grant. This annual $1,500 grant is open to students and faculty to support research related to the prevention of physical injury in children and adolescents. Funds may not be used for convention and meeting travel, indirect costs of the university, stipends of principal investigators or costs associated with manuscript preparation. APF and Div. 54 encourage faculty and students from any discipline interested in research related to the prevention of physical injury in children and adolescents, including but not limited to psychology, medicine, nursing, rehabilitation, social work, child development and public health.
Proposals should be no longer than seven single-spaced pages. In one Microsoft Word document include a 100-word abstract, description of the project, detailed budget and references. Within the seven-page limit, include a description of past relevant research and a supporting faculty supervisor letter if the applicant is a student. The deadline for proposals is April 1.
Contact Sharon Berry, PhD, at E-mail with any questions or to submit proposals.
-Compiled by I. Ramos, M. Nwigwe and E. Packard
