in this issue

Left to right: Dr. Maureen Hester, Head Judge of the CTUP poster session competition, Dr. Wynn Call, Department Chair, Dr. Roy Cohen, Dr. Gayla Preisser and Dr. Ladonna Lewis.

Five Psychology Faculty Members of Mesa Community College recently attended the annual Western Psychological Association (WPA) Conference in Maui, Hawaii. At WPA, a poster session, sponsored by CTUP (Council for the Teaching of Undergraduate Psychology), awarded a scholarship prize for attendance at next year's American Psychological Association Annual Conference in Chicago to the outstanding research poster presentation. The winning poster was co-authored by MCC's Drs. Gayla Preisser, Ladonna Lewis, Wynn Call and Roy Cohen. The poster was titled "Revitalizing Introductory Psychology Through Learning Outcomes: A Departmental Model." Presenting individual posters were Mr. Ed Lipinski, "Teaching The Relationship Between Human Behavior and Technology: Psychology of The Information Age," and Dr. Gayla Preisser, "Developmental Psychology Student Netletter: A Class Project."

Two of our faculty members assisted in the planning and organizing of the WPA Conference. Dr. Susan Horton served as the Coordinator of the Western Region for CTUP at WPA, and Dr. Ann Ewing serves on the Board of Directors of WPA, the first community college faculty member to ever serve in that capacity.

Three prizes are awarded each year in a national competition for student members of Psi Beta, the National Honor Society for community college psychology students. This year, MCC students swept the top three student research papers in the annual Psychology Awards Competition. Almost all of the students who were so honored were able to accompany the faculty to the conference and present their award winning papers at a separate poster session for students. The cash awards were established and funded by Allyn & Bacon (publishers) to honor and reward excellence in psychological studies. The award winners were: First Place: Crystal La Bass, "Low Arousal Hinders Performance on a Dual-Task." Second Place: Eric A. LaBass, "Learning Rate as a Function of Meaningfulness." Third Place: Sonali Gonzalez, Kandice Kardell, Ryan Quinn, Maggie Kennedy, Charmane Skow, Loretta Vukeles, and Jennifer Granillo, "Gender Trends in Compliance."