People

APA Past Presidents Norman Abeles, PhD, and Martin E.P. Seligman, PhD, have been elected to the executive board of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents (CSPP). CSPP is an organization composed of presidents, presidents-elect and immediate past presidents of more than sixty scientific societies and federations, including APA, the American Chemical Society and the American Physical Society. Abeles was elected as member-at-large of the council and Seligman as secretary--each for a one-year term.

This is the first year that two psychologists have served concurrently on the board.

Abeles and Seligman will add their expertise to discussions about federal science and research budgets, policy decisions and other important issues that come before the board at CSPP's two meetings this year.

Abeles is preparing a draft document on ethics for consideration at the May meeting, and also plans to promote aging issues. Seligman intends to encourage the press officers and presidents of CSPP member societies to combine forces to improve the news coverage of science, help media to perceive junk science and calm public health scares created by the media.

Prison psychologist George Rex Hurt, PhD, 74, died of cancer on Oct. 29. For nearly 20 years, Hurt headed Rex Hurt and Associates, a consulting firm in Chicago, where one of his biggest clients was the Michigan City prison. In 1990, Hurt joined the prison's staff full time as chief psychologist, where he worked for the remainder of his career. There, Hurt was respec-ted for his kindness and dedication to the prisoners' rehabilitation. His wife, Jane, their five children and seven grandchildren survive him.

DePaul University professor of psychology Leonard Jason, PhD, has received the school's Cortelyou-Lowery Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Teaching. The award honors Jason's 15 years of commitment to research, teaching, scholarship and community service at DePaul.

Much of Jason's research is aimed at improving the community--his projects cover topics such as blood-donator behavior, smoking cessation, child-safety issues and prevention of adolescent drug abuse. A dedicated student mentor and advisor, Jason involves his students in his research projects as a way to thoroughly train them in research methodology as undergraduates. Jason received a plaque and a $500 prize with the honor.

The National Academy of Sciences has selected experimental psychologists Nancy Kanwisher, PhD, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Harold Pashler, PhD, of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), to receive the prestigious Troland Research Awards for outstanding research. Each investigator will receive $35,000 for research support at a ceremony during the academy's 136th annual meeting in Washington, D.C., in April.

Kanwisher, an associate professor in the department of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, was chosen for her research on visual attention, awareness and imagery. In her lab, she uses behavioral measures and functional brain imaging to understand the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying visual attention and perception. She has not yet determined how best to use the research funds.

Pashler was chosen for his research on cognition and perception, which includes investigating the cognitive processing that occurs when people try to perform more than one task at a time, and studying how selective and divided attention relate to conscious perception. A professor of psychology at UCSD, Pashler plans to use the award money to update his lab computers and support some new studies of basic human learning mechanisms and emotion/cognition interactions.

For sports psychologist Tom Miller, PhD, college basketball's "March Madness" is more than a television diversion--it's work. Miller is the sports psychologist for the University of Kentucky's men's basketball team, the Wildcats, which won the NCAA Championship last year and is ranked fourth this season.

A professor of psychiatry in the College of Medicine at the university, Miller signed on as the team's new psychologist in 1997, the same season a new head coach, Orlando "Tubby" Smith, began with the team. Smith was eager to work with a psychologist from the start--an attitude that Miller says has made his job rewarding.

Smith asked Miller to determine how each player learns information so that he could tailor his coaching to each of them.

"Smith really wants to understand each of his players as a whole person--that makes him a really valuable coach," says Miller.

And both Miller and Smith figured the insight into the players' learning styles paid off when the Wildcats cinched the championship last year.

During the off-season, Miller also helps players off the court. Equipped with information about how they learn, Miller works with their teachers and tutors to boost their academic performance. He also assists Smith with recruiting new players.

This year, Miller is helping Smith take a similar approach to his coaching, but the Wildcats are facing a tougher season because many of last year's top players graduated or moved to the NBA.

While the job with the Wildcats is fun and challenging, Miller also views the work he does with the team as a way to expand his skills as a psychologist. "Flexibility and multiple skills is the key to responding to today's marketplace in sports psychology and the whole arena of psychological practice," says Miller.

Chris Stout, PsyD, has been selected as one of 10 "Volunteers of the Year" in the Chicago area for his work with children and commitment to international relief. Stout earned the honor from Pioneer Press, the publisher of the local newspapers in Chicago.

Working with groups such as Amnesty International and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Stout has volunteered and lectured in more than 12 countries. In October he spent three weeks in Vietnam with the Flying Doctors of America program running a pediatric pharmacy and helping doctors provide medical services. In December he coordinated a project to send holiday gifts and health-care supplies to children in Tanzania who have lost their parents to an HIV epidemic in the country.

This fall Stout will travel to South Africa for two weeks as a citizen ambassador with the People to People Ambassador Program. Through the program, Stout will meet with South African lawyers, physicians and elected officials to share ideas and discuss ways to address poverty and violence in South Africa.

Despite his busy volunteering schedule, Stout holds down a full-time administrative position at Forest Health System in Chicago, an integrated behavioral health system that includes a hospital, a residential care facility and an outpatient clinic. As chief of psychology, Stout directs managed-care contracting, research and program development at Forest Health.

Shellenberger named to prestigious fellowship

Psychology will take another giant step into the primary-care policy arena when Sylvia Shellenberger, PhD, represents APA at the U.S. Public Health Service's prestigious primary-care policy fellowship program this spring. The service established the fellowship in 1991 to train health-care leaders to be effective advocates for improving primary care. Each year, the Public Health Service seeks nominations from professional organizations and selects the top candidates to serve as fellows.

Shellenberger is the second psychologist to be selected as a fellow. Her broad experience in primary care and strong advocacy background make her an ideal candidate for the program.

In her more than 20 years of teaching, research and advocacy work, Shellenberger's main priority has been promoting collaboration between psychologists and physicians. As a professor in the department of family and community medicine at Mercer University School of Medicine, she teaches primary-care physicians to work in rural areas and trains physician faculty to be more effective teachers. She developed a curriculum at Mercer to train primary-care physicians to manage the psychological and family problems of their patients, and several other family medicine programs have implemented her model.

Shellenberger is also a tireless advocate for health care, particularly rural health care. She has chaired one of Georgia's advisory committees on Medicaid and has served for six years on APA's Rural Health committee, where she meets with legislators twice a year to voice the needs of rural families and communities.

To enhance her involvement with these activities, Shellenberger is eager to polish her leadership skills and meet with the major players in primary-care policy through the Public Health Service's fellowship. "I'm looking forward to developing a new network of primary-care practitioners and policy-makers who see, or will come to see, the importance of including psychologists in primary care," says Shellenberger.

In addition, she wants to meet representatives of other primary-care specialties such as dentists and internal medicine specialists to learn more about challenges they face and target areas for even greater collaboration with psychologists.

The fellowship is held over one week in March and two weeks in June. Last year's fellow, Susan McDaniel, PhD, looks forward to Shellenberger sharing the experience.

"The networking opportunities, as a discipline and an individual, were terrific, and the education about the federal process of policy-making was top-notch," says McDaniel. "Sylvia Shellenberger has the depth of experience in primary care that is very important to this fellowship, and she will be an excellent representative of psychology."

--J. Chamberlin

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