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INSIDE ARCHIVE


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UW-Green Bay, CL 815
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E-mail: matzken@uwgb.edu

Rev. May 13, 2008

 

Connecting learning to life?
In Human Development, it's par for the course

When Associate Prof. Regan Gurung won UW-Green Bay’s Founders Award for faculty scholarship last fall, his reputation as a prolific researcher and widely published scholar who engages students in high-level projects made him a solid choice.

Those qualities also make him a solid representative for the academic unit he chairs, Human Development.

Human Development emphasizes active research in bringing psychology, biology, anthropology and sociology to bear on understanding of the human life cycle. It’s one of UW-Green Bay’s most popular programs. Between the interdisciplinary major and its largest disciplinary subset, psychology, degrees are awarded to roughly 200 students annually. A sampling of highlights from the past year:

Nearly one-third of all student exhibitors in April’s campuswide student showcase were advised by Human Development faculty.
• Gurung, a sought-after presenter at national conferences, has been invited to next month’s American Psychological Association gathering to help create a blueprint for future undergraduate education.
• Erika Linzmeier, research assistant to Prof. Illene Noppe, won a scholarship to the 2008 Conference of the Association for Death Education and Counseling, in Montreal.
• Profs. Gurung, Ryan Martin, Georjeanna Wilson-Doenges and Kris Vespia led an unprecedented delegation of faculty and nine student co-presenters to the American Psychological Association meeting in San Francisco. Topics ranged from teaching and learning to gender in advertising and managing stress.
• Assistant Prof. Jill Collins White, a specialist in children and immigration, is one of only three dozen scholars from the United States and Mexico invited to present at a June conference in Philadelphia.
• Prof. Emeritus Fergus Hughes received the Founders award for institutional development.
• Martin was selected a Wisconsin Teaching Fellow. In a Packers-crazy year, he also became a “go-to” media source for his observations on the region’s
“Pack mentality” and football-season psyche.
• The program hosted a national workshop for high school teachers from across America last July on the teaching of biopsychology, or the study of brain, nervous system and biological bases of behavior. “If you have to get (this) across at the high school level,” explains Gurung, “teachers need some tricks in their bag.”



Age 40 to 100: There’s a study for you, too
The Human Development program’s communitywide Health Perceptions Survey is going strong. Project director, Associate Prof. Dean VonDras, is seeking volunteers ages 40 to 100 to complete a mail survey with a brief story and questions inquiring into the participant’s perception of illness symptoms as well as questions asking about the respondent’s own health and lifestyle. If interested, inquire at vondrasd@uwgb.edu.


Click here to download a PDF file of the entire May 2008 issue of Inside magazine.