Spring 2012 Commencement
Ceremony Announced!
More information here.
Ongoing Remodel: Clinical Neuroscience Core
Logan Hall is receiving a major
remodel on the 2nd floor. The department responded to the federal
request for proposals as part of the Recovery Act Limited Competition:
Core Facility Renovation, Repair, and Improvement. We submitted our
proposal to NIH in September 2009, and received the news in May 2010
that we were being funded – for almost $5 million.
The money is to renovate the Psychology Department’s outdated
neuroscience research space into a state-of-the-art Clinical
Neuroscience Center (CNC) facility. Specific Aims are: 1) to
consolidate and upgrade the clinical neuroscience research facility and
thereby support the highest quality NIH-funded research. This new
shared research environment will house the currently independent
laboratories and contain updated equipment and IT capabilities; 2) to
facilitate the development of new NIH-funded research programs and
early stage investigators. The CNC will consist of renovated clinical
neuroscience labs (Pediatric and Adult EEG, Transcranial Stimulation),
imaging and data analysis centers with high-speed IT links to
collaborating institutions such as the Mind Research Network (MRN),
neuropsychological testing rooms, collaborative/computerized work
areas, a server room, and secure data storage. The CNC will include the
state’s only system for stereotactic transcranial magnetic stimulation
(TMS) with a TMS-compatible EEG. Importantly, the CNC will support the
integration of
MRN’s neuroimaging and genetic data with CNC data, thereby offering
researchers access to vast amounts of shared data across studies,
modalities, sites, and disciplines. Although a number of faculty played
critical roles in preparing this proposal, the chair wants to ex-tend
special thanks to Drs. Kent Hutchison, Vince Clark, Kent Kiehl, and
Claudia Tesche.
Thank
you to everyone
for your patience during our construction period!
Alcohol Treatment
Services at UNM
Please
check out our new page here!
UNM'S
Center of Alcoholism, Substance Abuse and Addictions has been Awarded a
Five-Year, $1.7 million Grant
UNM'S
CASAA center has been awarded a five-year, $1.7 million institutional
research training grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse
and Alcoholism. According to the Principal Investigator, the Psychology
Department's Distinguished Professor Barbara S. McCrady, "The whole
idea is to provide support for the next generation of research
scientists and to help develop their areas of expertise and the skills
necessary to do that research." McCrady had a similar institutional
research training grant when she was at Rutgers University. "We will
also help students develop skills to learn how to obtain funding for
their research."
Titled "Alcohol Research Training: Change Methods &
Mechanisms," the training program will support four predoctoral fellows
in psychology and four postdoctoral fellows drawn from a variety of
academic disciplines. The students will receive a full stipend as
defined by NIAAA, approximately $21,000 for pre–docs and
$37,000 for post–docs, depending on when they received their
doctorate. The grant also supports travel to professional meetings and
provides additional funds to support research. NIAAA also pays up to 60
percent of tuition expenses. UNM, which is one of 28 institutions
across the country with an NIAAA institutional research training grant,
will waive the other 40 percent as an important institutional component
in support of the grant.
Janis
Anderson Wins Inaugeral Outstanding Online Teacher of the Year Award
A
hearty congratulations to Janis Anderson for being one of three
recipients of the new Outstanding Online Teacher of the Year Award!
Janis has been teaching online courses for us for years now, primarily
Brain and Behavior (PSY 240) and Depression, Diagnosis and Treatment
(PSY 450). She has also regularly offered her assistance to other
faculty and graduate students who have been preparing their own online
courses.
New
Book by Professor Geoffrey Miller Out May 14th, 2009
Dr. Geoffrey Miller, Associate Professor in Psychology, is the author
of a new popular science book on the evolutionary psychology of
consumer behavior. The book, titled Spent:
Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior,
will be released May 14 in the US/Canada by Viking/Penguin/Putnam, July
2 in the UK/Commonwealth by William Heinemann/Random House, and later
in Dutch, Korean, and other translations. Dr. Miller's other books
include Mating Intelligence:
Sex, Relationships, and the Mind's Reproductive System
and The Mating Mind: How
Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature.
Dr.
Jane Ellen Smith
Named Chair of
Psychology Department
Dr. Jane Ellen Smith, professor in the Psychology Department at UNM
since 1984, took over the role of Chair in August, 2008. Dr. Smith's
lab researches a diverse group of psychological topics including
assessment and treatment of body image and eating disorders,
cognitive-behavioral treatment of alcoholic homeless women, dual
diagnosis (substance abuse and chronic mental illness), the Community
Reinforcement
Approach (CRA) to treat alcohol problems, and Community
Reinforcement and Family Training (CRAFT) to engage treatment-refusing
substance abusers into treatment.
Dr.
Smith was recently named the 2007-09 Presidential Teaching Fellow, the
highest teaching award at the university.
Steve
Alley Wins Teaching Award
Psychology lecturer Steven Alley won #2 "Best Teacher at UNM" in the
Daily Lobo "Lo Mejor" best of student survey. The Lobo will be
publishing the results of their student survey in their "Otra Vez" best
of issue on April 5th.
PSYCHOLOGY GRADUATE STUDENT Kevin Hallgren has been awarded an NIH Ruth Kirschstein National Research Service Award through the UNM Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse, and Addictions (CASAA). The fellowship will provide two years of support for a project that uses network analysis to better understand how drinking problems may be transmitted through social support networks. For more info, click here.
PSYCHOLOGY
DOCTORAL CANDIDATE Tessa Margett, won the Susan
Deese-Roberts Teaching Assistant
of the Year Award. Tessa teaches Developmental Psychology on main
campus.
Tessa is part of Dr. Witherington's
lab where her
research interests include cognitive development in pre-school
children, specifically pre-schoolers ability to distinguish living
kinds from man-made objects.
PSYCHOLOGY DOCTORAL CANDIDATE Rachael Falcon was also nominated for the Susan Deese-Roberts Teaching Assistant of the Year Award.
PSYCHOLOGY GRADUATE STUDENT Zhen Yang received the Graduate Deans Dissertation Fellowship for her “Spatial orienting and selective attention in pediatric mild TBI patients: An fMRI study.”
Last Updated 2/3/2012
|
|