OSU to host conference on teaching psychology

Thursday, August 26, 2010

The fourth annual meeting of the Oklahoma Network for the Teaching of Psychology takes place from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 24 on the Oklahoma State University campus in Stillwater.

The conference, hosted by the Oklahoma State University Department of Psychology and OSU School of Applied Health and Educational Psychology, is open to teachers and students from high schools, two-year and four-year colleges, and universities across the nation.

Each year approximately 75,000 students in the United States graduate with a degree in psychology, says conference co-director Shelia Kennison, an associate psychology professor at OSU. “At OSU, psychology is one of our most popular majors so the aim of the conference is to bring together individuals who are involved in teaching psychology at all educational levels. This is a very unique conference nationally.”

Keynote speakers are:

Robert Sternberg recently was named provost at OSU and is the former dean of Tuft University School of Arts and Sciences. Before that, he was on the psychology faculty at Yale University.

Daniel Schacter, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, oversees a brain-imaging research lab that focuses on the role that memory plays in thinking and planning for the future, and trying to understand why people err in remembering. He wrote Searching for Memory and The Seven Sins of Memory.

Linda Woolf, a psychology professor at Webster University, will discuss the psychology of hate groups. Her research focuses on psychosocial roots of the Holocaust, genocide, terrorism and social justice issues that include women’s global human rights.

Joy Jacob-Lawson is an assistant psychology professor in the Graduate Center for Gerontology at the University of Kentucky. A lot of her research focuses on how individuals make high-risk decisions such as retirement investment allocations and cancer treatment decisions.

Stephen F. Davis, a professor emeritus at Emporia State University, will take an in-depth look at academic dishonesty and its challenges.

Other speakers include Randy Hemphill, of Norman (Okla.) High School; John Phelan, Western Oklahoma College; and Sue C. Jacobs, OSU.

The conference is open to the public. Talks take place in Room 010 at Willard Hall. To learn more contact Kennison at (405) 744-7335 or shelia.kennison@okstate.edu or Jacobs, a co-director and associate professor in the OSU School of Applied Health and Educational Psychology at (405) 744-9585 or sue.c.jacobs@okstate.edu. For more information, visit http://psychology.okstate.edu/faculty/kennison/ontop.htm.

Conference support is provided by the OSU College of Education, OSU School of Applied Health and Educational Psychology, Worth Publishers and Pearson Publishers. The OSU Department of Psychology is one of 24 departments in the College of Arts and Sciences at OSU. To learn more visit cas.okstate.edu.