other photos from Convocation 2006 available here...
The Psychology Department is delighted to continue the tradition of hosting a luncheon for all graduating undergraduate and graduate students and their families attending the Spring Convocation program scheduled for June 15th. We expect to host over 200 people for this event and our faculty and staff members enjoy meeting family and friends honouring successful academic achievements. Of particular note are the awards presented as follows:
Faculty of Arts Departmental Award
Honours Thesis Awards
University's Governor General's Gold Medal
Distinguished Teacher Award
Faculty of Arts Departmental Award (Jillian Banfield)
The Faculty of Arts award is given to the Honours Psychology student who is graduating June 2006 and has the highest Psychology average.
Honours Thesis Awards (six awards)
The following graduating students have been selected to receive the annual Honours Thesis Awards in recognition of their exceptional research work and thesis writing:
- Liane Dron
- Jennifer Lepock
- Lindsay Schaefer
- Marita Partanen
- Emily Schryer
- Cassandra Eriksson
University's Governor General's Gold Medal (Dr. Brandon Wagar)
Each spring convocation the Governor General's Gold Medal is awarded to a single graduate student (chosen from among the six faculties at UW) in recognition of their academic excellence. This year's Gold Medal Winner is Psychology's own Brandon Wagar. Brandon was a student in the Behavioural Neuroscience Division of the Psychology Department and his PhD program was supervised by Mike Dixon. Brandon is currently engaged in an NSERC-funded Post Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Victoria and will return to our Waterloo campus to formally receive his doctoral degree on June 15, 2006.
Brandon's doctoral thesis was entitled "The good and the bad of affective guidance: Insights from the influence of automatic racial prejudice on complex decisions under uncertainty" and his research interests reflect an astonishing breadth. In addition to his doctoral thesis work, (part of which has recently been accepted for publication in the journal Cognitive Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience), Brandon has published articles on synaesthesia (an unusual condition in which black numbers and letters are perceived in colour), a well as articles on how the meaning of objects influences how visual features are represented in memory. He has also published research with social psychologist Dov Cohen on how culture influences our memories. Currently he is conducting research on prosopagnosia (patients who have an inability to recognize people by their face). One particularly noteworthy benchmark of this student's excellence, Brandon has a first-authored article in Psychological Review, arguably the most influential journal in psychology. This computational model (co-authored with philosophy professor Paul Thagard) uses "spike coding" to simulate how the nucleus accumbens serves to integrate cognitive information from the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus, with emotional information from the amygdala, all in the service of enabling us to make effective decisions. Given the breadth of Brandon's research, and his accomplishments in so many different areas of psychology, philosophy and theoretical neuroscience, his being awarded the Governor General's Gold Medal is a source of pride not just for the Psychology Department but also for the entire Faculty of Arts. Congratulations Brandon!
Distinguished Teacher Award (Dr. Erik Woody)
Photo Below:UW President Dr. David Johnston and Dr. Erik Woody
Department Chair, Mike Dixon, notes: "Having had the opportunity to read some of the testimonials for Erik, and having heard about Erik's teaching from both undergraduate and graduate students, I note that Erik's outstanding teaching has shaped not just the precision of thinking but often the very careers of students passing through our department. His training of students at both the undergraduate and graduate level is simply superb.
The University's Daily Bulletin reported "Erik Woody, clinical psychology professor specializing in statistics and psychometry, is said to have achieved the unthinkable: getting Psych 800 students to laugh out loud."
Erik's award will be formally presented at the UW Spring 2006 Convocation and to round out this unique honour, his picture will be added to Psych's "wall of fame"
where we have honoured previous distinguished teachers, Barbara Bulman-Fleming, Geoff Fong and Gary Griffin.
On behalf of our faculty, staff and students we take this opportunity to congratulate Erik on this great accomplishment. Erik has, in the words of Robertson Davies, "chalk dust in his veins", and for that we know his students are extremely grateful, and his colleagues are extremely proud.
