In the news

Sharlene Newman and team named City of Bloomington 2018 Woman of the Year

Professor Sharlene Newman was one of four Bloomington women to be collectively named 2018 Woman of the Year for a collaborative study examining the implicit biases of black and white young adults in Bloomington. Joined by Morgan Newman, Sharlene’s daughter, and Phoebe Powell, both Bloomington High School North graduates, as well as professor of public health Maresa Murray, Sharlene and her team compared the experiences of black girls in a predominately white town and school to the experiences of white girls in the same environment. Using focus groups and data collection, the project showed that from kindergarten through high school young black women have more negative experiences than white women.

Passionate about helping younger generations of black girls, Sharlene and her colleagues wrote an editorial for the Indianapolis Star that subsequently was picked up by USA Today. They met with school superintendents to encourage teacher trainings to better address issues related to race and gender, ultimately to help create equal opportunities for young black girls and women in Bloomington.

Sharlene has also been the focus of a number of other varied – and unique – news stories: a biographical blogpost in celebration of African American History Month; a press release on a study tracking the role of the transmitter glutamate in alcohol cravings; and a comic adventure in neuroimaging, titled “Is ‘The Bachelor’ Making Me Dumb?” by two Washington Post reporters.

The National Academy of Sciences named PBS Distinguished Professor Richard Shiffrin the 2018 recipient of the Atkinson Prize in Psychological and Cognitive Sciences.

The award pays tribute to Shiffrin as “the world’s foremost scientist in the field of human memory,” to his “pioneering contributions to the empirical and theoretical investigation of both short- and long-term memory,” as well as substantial contributions in other areas, such as attention and perceptual learning.

Shiffrin began his work on human memory in 1968, when he and his Stanford advisor Richard Atkinson proposed the Atkinson–Shiffrin model of modal memory. Atkinson, whose grant to the NAS resulted in the Atkinson Prize, is president emeritus of the University of California, among other positions. He is also a PBS alumnus, who received his PhD in 1955. More recently, he received the inaugural Richard C. Atkinson Lifetime Achievement Award from the department in 2013.

The award pays tribute to Shiffrin as 'the world’s foremost scientist in the field of human memory'.

Congratulations to assistant professors Emily Fyfe and Lorenzo Lorenzo-Luaces

on receiving the Association for Psychological Science Rising Star designation, which recognizes early career scientists for research that has advanced the field. Fyfe was recognized for her work on how children think and learn about math and how to use that information to design effective instructional techniques. Lorenzo-Luaces received the honor for his clinical research on the treatment and phenomenology of depression, its classification and differentiation from “normal” sadness, and on the outcomes and processes of change in depression treatments, especially cognitive-behavioral therapies.

PBS alumna Mary Czerwinski (Ph.D. ’88) received a Distinguished Alumni Award from the IU College of Arts and Sciences.

A former student of Richard Shiffrin, Czerwinski is currently a principal researcher and research manager of Microsoft’s Visualization and Interaction (VIBE) Research Group, where she focuses on emotion tracking, task management, and health and wellness for individuals and groups. In 2013 she received a Distinguished Alumni Award from PBS at its first Alumni Recognition Event in celebration of its 125th anniversary.

Professor Aina Puce

was featured in the Organization for Human Brain Mapping’s monthly blog, in a “Q&A with Multi-Modal Imager Aina Puce.” Here readers can learn about her career path, scientific challenges and her thoughts on the future of neuroimaging. She was also one of four “keynote tweeters” at the March 8th Twitter Brain Conference, a conference entirely on Twitter at which she tweeted about different modes of social information processing.

GO TO "Q AND A"

Graduate student Heidi Williams and undergraduate William Jettinghoff,

both working in the lab of Professor Mary Murphy, were recently accepted to the competitive National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Williams’ work examines how organizational mindsets shape the recruitment and retention of women in STEM-focused companies, such as tech companies and startups, to consider whether companies that endorse or exhibit more of a fixed (vs. growth) mindset might make negative stereotypes about women’s abilities in STEM more salient and how that might create a more threatening climate for women in those companies.

Jettinghoff completed an honors thesis with Professor Ed Hirt, in whose lab he also worked, and will begin graduate school in social psychology at the University of British Columbia in the fall. His thesis explored the relationship between self-handicapping behavior and the belief in free will. Graduate student Janelle Sherman, also working with Hirt, received honorable mention. Her research investigates social relationships, in particular the way people respond to acceptance and rejection from their partners. Fellows receive a three-year annual stipend of $34,000 and a $12,000 allowance for tuition and fees.

Congratulations to John Kruschke,

who was named a 2018 IU Provost Professor, in recognition of his extraordinary contributions to research and teaching as a leading theoretician in both cognitive psychology and Bayesian statistics. He created a new theory of attention and category learning based on rigorous mathematical and computer simulation methods, while his book, “Doing Bayesian Data Analysis,” was an instant success. In addition to many prestigious awards for research, he is an eight-time winner of the IU Trustees’ Teaching Excellence award.

Human Resources Coordinator **Lana Fish**

An endowed gift annually recognizes outstanding staff

In 2015 PBS professor Preston Garraghty and his wife Lori Arnold Garraghty created a $25,000 endowed gift to PBS in memory of Preston’s mother and brother. Rather than taking the usual route of creating a scholarship or fellowship, they decided to establish an award to honor PBS staff, offering a $2,500 award to one staff member each year from now into the future.

A clerical worker for most of her life, Preston’s mother put her three children through college on her own limited budget. His brother, who served as the director of the Department of Corrections in Virginia with a real estate business on the side, “deeply valued the contributions of his staff in getting their mission done.” They both would have appreciated this gesture, Preston believes, to acknowledge the value of the everyday work that makes PBS function. Preston likewise observes the essential role of the PBS staff in keeping the department together. Quite simply: “If you took all the staff out of the department, it would crumble,” he says.

In December the first award was aptly given to human resources coordinator Lana Fish. In no small degree, Lana holds the staff itself together with her kindness, wisdom and tact. Lana has served the department since 1983, first as clinic coordinator, then as human resources coordinator for the whole department. More than that, she has been the trusted confidant to four successive chairs, as well as countless faculty, grad students and staff. As PBS chair Bill Hetrick has said, “Unmatched in her skill, professionalism, diplomacy and character, her unwavering commitment to the good of the whole has made Lana the bedrock of our department.”

Or as Preston puts it, “Lana is Lana.” Need we say more?