PEOPLE

Evvie Becker, PhD, has joined the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as a senior policy analyst in the division of child and youth policy, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. Becker will review legislation and budget proposals that relate to children and youth, and oversee research projects linked to child and youth policy.

Becker, an assistant professor in the clinical psychology program at the University of Connecticut for the past five years, is looking forward to returning to policy work. Child and family policy sparked her interest in 1992 when she served as an APA Congressional Science Fellow. Becker worked for Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), then chair of the Subcommittee on Children, Family, Drugs and Alcoholism.

U.S. Army psychologist Lt. Col. Frederick Neal Garland, PhD, died of cancer on April 27. He was 46. Garland was a command psychologist at the U.S. Army Recruiting Command in Fort Jackson, S.C.

A veteran of Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm, Garland was known for his research on combat stress and mental health issues among soldiers and their families.

University of Virginia (UVA) psychologist David L. Hill, PhD, is the principal investigator of a nearly $3 million grant for a collaborative research project that could help people regain their ability to hear, taste and smell after a severe injury.

The five-year grant, awarded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders at the National Institutes of Health, will support three teams of psychologists, biologists, otolaryngologists and neuroscientists conducting neurobiological experiments at UVA's College of Arts and Sciences and School of Medicine and Washington University's School of Medicine. These experiments will explore how peripheral sensory receptor cells in the olfactory, auditory and gustatory systems develop and regenerate after injury.

Their findings could help people who have lost the ability to smell, hear or taste as a result of exposure to loud noises or surgical procedures. Hill is investigating the role diet plays in the ability to regenerate taste receptor cells after injury. Another investigator in the project, UVA psychology chair Peter Brunges, PhD, is studying the development of the sensory structures within the ear and nose to uncover clues about congenital defects.

TOPPS member honored

Randal Ernst, the former chair of Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools (TOPSS), has received a 1999 "Crystal Apple" National Teacher Award from Time- Warner Cable for stimulating his students' interest in poetry through music videos.

Ernst, a high school psychology and English teacher at Lincoln High School in Lincoln, Neb., is one of 32 K-12 educators across the United States to win the prestigious award, which honors creative teaching using resources that Time-Warner Cable provides to schools at no cost.

Ernst was honored for his curriculum, "From meter to metaphor: teaching English using music videos," which he created when he discovered that his early morning sophomore English class was having trouble learning poetry. Ernst challenged his advanced psychology class to help him create an eye-opening curriculum. When the students brainstormed about activities that interest students, the idea that cropped up most frequently was music television, says Ernst.

Seeing a connection between poetry and song lyrics, Ernst recorded music videos from MTV and VH-1 and downloaded the videos' lyrics from the Internet. While students watched a video and read along with the printed lyrics, Ernst assigned tasks such as, "Locate the metaphor on flying in this Lenny Kravitz video" or "Find personification in 'Livin' La Vida Loca' by Ricky Martin." To promote diversity, Ernst selected a multicultural range of music and encouraged students to bring in their own videos.

"It was a hit," says Ernst, who then worked with his psychology students to measure the English students' progress. "Students had better retention of and were able to use more metaphors and other figures of speech in their own writing."

Ernst also found that test scores improved and students were more interested in moving on to other forms of poetry.

"The light bulb is on," he says.

Ernst serves as the TOPSS representative to APA's Board of Educational Affairs and is one of the original founders of TOPSS. Ernst received his award and a $1,000 prize on June 4 in Washington, D.C.

--J. Chamberlin



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