RESEARCH

Faculty Research Activities
All faculty members in the School of Psychology, Family and Community (SPFC) are active in empirical research and writing. Engaging in knowledge generation in our fields is an exciting process, and it brings alive the concepts and content we teach in our classrooms. SPFC values scholarly productivity in all four domains presented by Ernest L. Boyer in his influential Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate.¹ That is, the scholarship of discovery, of integration, of application, and of teaching.

All SPFC faculty members present research papers at national and international conferences and author scientific articles, book chapters, and the like. Topics being researched by SPFC faculty members are both fascinating and diverse. A partial list includes emotional development of aggressive/ rejected children, effective leading in adversity, psychological interventions for managing pain, mental illness in adolescent offenders, rehabilitation of stroke patients, forgiveness and adult attachment, Sabbath rhythm and rest and psychological well-being, physical activity and quality of life in women's health, self esteem and emotions, ethnic identity and ethnic conflict, problem gambling among college students, diagnosis of mild brain injury, and leadership development in top executives.

Faculty Research Sites

The Lustyk Women's Health Lab

Student Research Activities A distinctive of SPFC is its extensive student research program. For example in 2004-2005,

• Eighty-four students across all degree programs in the school presented research projects at the Annual SPFC Research Conference in June 2005.
  
• Eight marriage and family therapy students were co-authors with faculty on research presentations in state, regional or national professional conferences.
  
• Twenty-seven clinical psychology doctoral students were co-authors with faculty on twenty-two different research presentations in state, regional, or national professional conferences.
  
• Fifty-six undergraduate psychology students participated in research projects under faculty supervision. Twenty-four of these students and four psychology alumni were co-authors with faculty on research presentations in state, regional or national professional conferences. In addition, three psychology students and three psychology alumni co-authored scholarly publications with faculty.

For more specific information on faculty and student research interests and publications, click on one of the following links:

Clinical Psychology Faculty

Clinical Psychology Students

Marriage and Family Therapy Faculty

Organizational Psychology Faculty

Undergraduate Psychology Faculty

Laboratory Facilities
SPFC maintains a number of research and teaching labs in Marston/Watson Hall and in the new Science Building. The psychophysiology lab is located in a specially designed room to control for sound, temperature and light. It is equipped to run cardiorespiratory stress testing through the use of continuous electrocardiogram and pulmonary monitoring via surface skin electrodes and tension transduction respectively. Materials are available for the collecting and storing of salivary cortisol samples in accordance with current biohazard safety guidelines put forth by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The primary developmental psychology lab is located in a suite of three rooms: 1) The child/family session room includes video and sound recording equipment, a computer, and psychophysiological equipment to collect cardiac, blood pressure and skin conductance data. This room also has a one-way mirror for unobtrusive viewing of sessions during filming. 2) The office/filming room contains a video stack for recording sessions, and a computer for data entry. The video stack includes a mixer for audio and video signals and a date/time code generator. 3) The coding room contains computers as well as VCRs and monitors for coding sessions.

The primary social psychology lab is located in two connected rooms. The rooms include linked workstations containing computers permitting individual or yoked experimentation. These computers are also programmed for experiments in cognition and perception (e.g., reaction time tasks, signal detection tests).

Our clinical observation suites are equipped with one-way mirrors, and video and audio recording capabilities which permit real-time supervision and training. These observational suites are also available for developmental and social psychological research.

SPFC's "wet" labs in the university's newly-opened Science Building, adjacent to Marston-Watson Hall. Here is located the learning lab, which contains numerous stations equipped with operant cubicles permitting experiments in instrumental and classical conditioning controlled by a central computer which has the capability of separate programming and cumulative recording of each individual station. Also in this building is SPFC's hi-tech psychophysiological demonstration classroom in which the SPFC students take their neural basis of behavior courses, work with neuroanatomical models, and participate in brain and spinal cord dissection exercises.

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¹Boyer, E. L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. Princeton, NJ: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Princeton University Press