Dr. Diane F. Halpern
Diane F. Halpern (BA, University of Pennsylvania; MA, Temple University; MA and PhD, University of Cincinnati) is director of the Berger Institute for Work, Family, and Children and professor of psychology at Claremont McKenna College (one of the Claremont Colleges in Los Angeles). Formerly, she was professor of psychology (also department chair and dean of undergraduate studies) at California State University, San Bernardino. In her new position, she is establishing an institute that is taking a multidisciplinary approach to the issues that affect both work and families. These include encouraging family-friendly workplaces, reducing stress, enhancing workplace skills and understanding how people respond to multiple social roles that are often in conflict, such as the role of parent and worker.
APA service: Halpern's service to APA began as soon as she completed her PhD in 1979. She served on the Board of Educational Affairs, the Committee for International Relations in Psychology and as a Council Representative. She is a past president of Divs. 1 (Society for General Psychology) and 2 (Society for the Teaching of Psychology), a fellow in Div. 35 (Society for the Psychology ofWomen), Div. 3 (Experimental Psychology), and Div. 52 (Inter-national Psychology), and a member in Div. 48 (Peace) and Div. 15 (Educational). Halpern is past-president of the Western Psychological Association. She also served on a broad range of APA and division committees, chairing the Defining Scholarship in Psychology Task Force and, is currently participating in the task force that is establishing learning outcomes from an undergraduate major in psychology.
Awards: Her teaching, service to psychology and research have been recognized with many awards including the 2002 Outstanding Teaching Award from the Western Psychological Association, Wang Family Excellence Award, American Psychological Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching, Distinguished Career Contributions to Education and Training, G. Stanley Hall Lecture and the Outstanding Professor Award from California State University-Statewide.
Recent work/publications: Much of Halpern's most recent work has been in the application of learning principles in settings where real people learn and in enhancing critical thinking skills. In keeping with her belief that psychological research should be the cornerstone for public policy, she presented testimony on motivational, psychosocial and cognitive applications to applied learning settings to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science and the White House Office of Science and Technology. She has written or co-edited many books, including "Thought and Knowledge: An Introduction to Critical Thinking" (4th edition), "Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities" (3rd edition), "States of Mind: American and Post-Soviet Perspectives on Contemporary Issues in Psychology" and "Applying the Science of Learning to University Teaching."
Media appearances/boards: Halpern has made many media appearances, including the "Larry King Show," CNN, "Good Morning America," national and international radio broadcasts, and interviews for newspapers and popular press as a means of advancing and explaining psychology to the general public. She is on the editorial board of a wide range of journals--Brain and Cognition, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, Journal of Applied Psychology, and was on the board for JEP: General and Journal of Educational Psychology.
Halpern's candidate statement
I am a passionate advocate for psychology because I believe that applications of psychological research through practice and education can alleviate suffering, advance knowledge and elevate the human condition. For many Americans and other people around the world, these are difficult times. We need to find better ways to convince lawmakers and the general public that psychologists can help. We need to emphasize the solid evidentiary basis of clinical practice and what works to promote learning, and explain that it is because of our reliance on data-based conclusions that psychologists should be working with legislators when policies are written that pertain to health care, insurance, education, justice, science and the military, among others.
The turf wars that have divided APA have been detrimental to all of us and have kept us from making progress on important issues that limit our autonomy, reduce our income and harm our image in the media. I will work collaboratively to dismantle managed health-care plans that limit the psychologist's ability to determine the type and length of treatment and relegate these decisions to formulas that cannot account for individual differences. We can persuade legislators that psychologists with specialized training in the use of psychotropic drugs can make better decisions about their use than prescribing physicians or nurses who have little expertise in this specialized area. The clinical, academic (i.e., research and education), and public policy aspects of psychology need each other, and in the understanding of the general public, they are one and the same. Our fortunes (financial and otherwise) and futures rise and fall together. We will all benefit from work that spans psychology's many subdisciplines. I promise to work for all psychologists.
Thank you for considering my candidacy.
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