2023 Society for Teaching of Psychology Awards and Recognition Recipients

Abstract

This year marks the forty-fourth year of STP's annual Excellence in Teaching Awards Program, the fourth year of both its Civic Engagement Award and its Mentorship of Teachers Award, and the third year of its Promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award. Each 2023 recipient was selected by a different panel1 and received a plaque and a check for US $1,500 at the Annual Conference on Teaching (ACT) in Pittsburg, PA. We sincerely appreciate all nominators, nominees, and reviewers for their participation in the awards process.

This year marks the 44th year of STP's Annual Excellence in Teaching Awards Program, the fourth year of both its Civic Engagement Award and its Mentorship of Teachers Award, and the third year of its Promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award. Each 2023 recipient was selected by a different panel ¹ and received a plaque and a check for US $1,500 at the Annual Conference on Teaching in Pittsburg, PA. We sincerely appreciate all nominators, nominees, and reviewers for their participation in the awards process.

Excellence in Teaching Awards

STP's Excellence in Teaching awards recognize outstanding teaching in six different categories:

Adjunct Faculty Teaching Excellence Award (for adjunct faculty) ²

Jane S. Halonen Teaching Excellence Award (for those in their first 10 years of full-time teaching)

Mary Margaret Moffett Memorial Teaching Excellence Award (for high school faculty)

Robert S. Daniel Teaching Excellence Award (for 4-year college and university faculty)

Wayne Weiten Teaching Excellence Award (for 2-year college faculty)

Wilbert J. McKeachie Teaching Excellence Award (for graduate students)

Jane S. Halonen Teaching Excellence Award

The recipient of the Jane S. Halonen Teaching Excellence Award for faculty in their first 10 years of teaching is Dr. Leslie Berntsen. Leslie received her B.A. in Psychology from New York University and both her M.A. in Psychology and her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Southern California (USC). She is a Lecturer in Psychology at the USC. Leslie makes STP history by being the fourth person ever to win two STP teaching excellence awards, as she was also a Wilbert J. McKeachie Teaching Excellence Award recipient! In addition to her two STP teaching awards, she has additionally received two USC Excellence in Teaching Awards, the Teaching Resources Prize from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, and the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology (NITOP) Speaker Award.

Leslie's courses have a reputation for being incredibly interesting, inspirational, and well-structured, and earn her glowing reviews from students. Her students appreciate her ability to give large classes the personal, tight-knit feel characteristic of much smaller classes. “She takes the time to cater for every student, even for a 200-person sized class,” writes one student, “and helps each one to the best of her ability!” “I cannot express enough how lucky I felt to have a teacher that really demonstrated how much she cared about her students and who motivated us to do our best,” writes another. Her classes are so popular that students have waited several semesters for an open spot.

Students often find public speaking extremely intimidating, so Leslie helps scaffold their presentation abilities by having them summarize a recent study in psychology or neuroscience with classmates in everyday language in 2 min or less near the beginning of the semester before they’re graded on longer, more formal presentations. Writing prompts that students complete such as reflecting on the experience of deliberately violating a benign social norm, participating in a personal day of silence, and evaluating the accuracy of mental illness portrayal in a work of fiction of their choosing allows them to apply psychological concepts and ideas to their own lives. Students write empirically supported op-eds about a mental health-related issue of their choosing to practice the marketable skills of effectively crafting and refining an argument with supportive evidence and making a compelling case accessible to the general public. They demonstrate course content understanding by writing and annotating their own multiple-choice questions and responding to Jeopardy-style clues about the course material.

Leslie's commitment to teaching excellence extends beyond her own teaching. Each year she mentors several graduate students who act as TAs for her courses. She additionally mentors graduate students who are selected for USC's Mentored Teaching Fellowship, which provides students the opportunity to develop and offer courses of their own choosing, and her mentees have won university-wide teaching awards. She shares syllabi and resources on STP's Project Syllabus and participates in teaching demonstrations; a recent demonstration at NITOP's annual meeting involved incorporating antiracist pedagogy into the classroom. She has led workshops and training on improving teaching methods and increasing inclusivity at Harvard University, Princeton University, the Western Psychological Association's Annual Convention, and the American Psychological Association's Convention, among others, and has a manuscript under review on the “Pedagogy of the empowered” in which she describes how to incorporate socially engaged science into the teaching of psychology. She additionally serves on STP's Diversity Committee, its Presidential Task Forces on Decolonizing Introductory Psychology as well as Teaching to Make a Difference, and is the Inaugural Chair of its Promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award. STP is pleased to present Dr. Leslie Berntsen with the 2023 Robert S. Daniel Teaching Excellence Award.

Robert S. Daniel Teaching Excellence Award

The recipient of the Robert S. Daniel Teaching Excellence Award for 4-year college and university faculty is Dr. Colleen Seifert. Colleen received her B.A. in Psychology from Gustavus Adolphus College and her M.A., M. Phil., and Ph.D. in Psychology from Yale University. She is a Professor at the University of Michigan.

In addition to the Robert S. Daniel Teaching Excellence Award, Colleen has received multiple awards for her innovative teaching, including the prestigious Provost's Teaching Innovation Award in both 2018 and 2021 and the College of Literature, Science, and Art's Individual Award for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education in 2019. In 2011, she was named to an Arthur F. Thurnau Professorship, which is the highest university honor for tenured faculty who demonstrate an exceptional commitment to undergraduate teaching.

Colleen goes to great lengths to make a difference both in and outside of the classroom in the lives of her students, providing them with guidance for navigating difficult situations that academia can offer A former first-generation, low-income college student and immigrant from Ghana with very limited access to resources details the life-altering impact that Colleen has had on his career path. Currently, a medical student at the Stanford University School of Medicine, he writes “without her tireless support, encouragement and dedication, I would not be where I am today; I know this all too well because of the divergent path my life has taken compared to the paths of many people I grew up with!” Students frequently declare a major in Psychology after taking classes with Colleen and they appreciate her innovative approach to topics. In her Research Methods course, for example, she worked with graduate students to create an antiracist pedagogy where students examined the role of race using the research methods they were learning across a series of assignments; nearly all of her students (several hundred in total) reported that these lessons had changed their views about racial biases.

Colleen mentors her students’ professional development by engaging them in research early in their college careers and continuing through their senior theses. Many have published journal articles with her and they regularly attend and present at both national and international conferences. Her students are nominees or recipients of academic honors and fellowships. She frequently chairs or serves on doctoral, master, and honors thesis committees, in addition to mentoring several undergraduates each year on independent research projects.

Colleen played a pivotal role in strengthening and expanding her department's Honors Research Program, a capstone sequence in which students with a GPA of 3.4 or above design an independent research project and write a polished manuscript reporting their findings. Under her leadership, enrollment rose from 30 to over 100 students. She has helped increase research opportunities for students not in the Honors Program and has contributed to creating an environment where faculty commit to mentoring as many students as possible in research experiences.

Much of Colleen's research focuses on scholarship of learning and teaching in psychology, education, and the STEM fields. A major research project she led on teaching creative skills in college courses, for example, involved over 450 undergraduate students and instructors in 20 diverse courses across the arts, education, engineering, humanities, and social sciences. Results revealed common tools (i.e., open-ended projects and skill exercises) as well as distinctive techniques (i.e., iterative projects and self-reflection exercises) across disciplines. Other studies have explored factors that improve students’ causal reasoning about correlational evidence, as well as how college instructors foster creative skills development in class and the impact that students view these experiences as having on their creative skill development. STP is pleased to present Dr. Colleen Seifert with the 2023 Robert S. Daniel Teaching Excellence Award.

Mary Margaret Moffett Memorial Teaching Excellence Award (High School)

The recipient of the Mary Margaret Moffett Memorial Teaching Excellence Award for high school faculty is Maria Vita. Maria received her B.A. in History with a Social Studies certification from Messiah University and her MA in Education from Millersville University. She teaches Social Studies classes at Penn Manor High School and developed their AP Psychology program.

Maria creates authentic learning experiences that give students the opportunity to use psychological principles in real life. For example, she maintains an in-house rat laboratory for ethical research in learning where students use both classical and operant conditioning to teach rats to play basketball, among other activities. Students learn songs to solidify class concepts and facilitate retrieval and conduct in-class experiments to better understand the consequences of task switching on efficiency and processing speed. They read case studies from medical professionals and practice identifying different psychological disorders. A former student and current medical school applicant traces her interest in a career as a Psychiatrist back to experiences in Maria's class and credits her excellent Medical College Admissions Test scores to study strategies learned from her.

Maria's passion is contagious and her peers view her as a mentor as well as an expert in content and pedagogy. “I’ve had the opportunity to interact and work closely with hundreds of high school psychology teachers,” a fellow teacher comments, “and if I could choose one to teach my own two sons, it would be Maria.” “It would be difficult for me to overstate my respect for Maria as a teacher and as a human being,” writes another teacher, “and it is not hyperbole for me to say that I think she is the best high school psychology teacher in the country.” Her teaching has won various well-deserved accolades, including Penn Mannor School District's Outstanding Secondary Educator and the APA's Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools Excellence in Teaching Award.

Maria enthusiastically shares her expertise in best teaching practices with other teachers. She has presented extensively at conferences on the use of empirical-based practices to enhance teaching, building student scientific literacy, and ethics in teaching, among other topics. She additionally has several web-published classroom lesson plans on a range of subjects, including peripheral vision demonstration, distinguishing between correlational and experimental research, and the open defiance of many antislave activists on the Underground Railroad. Maria also has a chapter on normal distributions and descriptive statistics in APA's Activities for Teaching Statistics and Research Methods: A Guide for Psychology Instructors (McEntarffer & Vita, 2017).

Maria has taken several leadership roles that will impact current and future generations of psychology teachers. As Chair of Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools (an affiliate division of APA), Maria steered the national agenda for how best to identify and support the needs of teachers, providing them with resources so that they might excel. Maria has risen to supervisory and management roles at the AP Psychology Reading, an annual multiday event in which about 600 teachers convene to score around 300,000 AP Psychology essays. After only a few years, she was promoted to a Question Leader, a supervisory position bestowed on less than 2% of the teachers who participate in this event. STP is pleased to present Maria Vita with the 2023 Mary Margaret Moffett Memorial Teaching Excellence Award.

Wayne Weiten Teaching Excellence Award

The recipient of the Wayne Weiten Teaching Excellence Award for 2-year college faculty is Heather Schoenherr. Heather received both her B.S. in Psychology and her M.S. in Experimental Psychology from Idaho State University and is a professor at the College of Western Idaho (CWI). She has recently been recognized as a CWI faculty of distinction as well as faculty of the year.

In her classes, Heather frequently combines short, impactful lectures with class discussions, group activities, and low-stakes assignments. She prioritizes hands-on student learning and project-based learning that help develop her students’ academic skills and prepare them for transfer to a 4-year school. In her Statistical Methods course, for example, students analyze data that they’ve collected and present their findings as a poster in a conference-style setting that she hosts. Her Writing for the Social Sciences course (which she created) provides students with valuable skills in reading peer-reviewed journal articles and synthesizing information into a literature review using APA format. In her Social Sciences Capstone class, students design and implement charity projects and events in their community. For example, one such event raised over $11,500 in support of Court Appointed Special Advocates of SW Idaho and provided 12 foster youth with the care and essentials they will need for a year.

Heather is passionate about mentoring students. As faculty advisor for the Psychology club, she counsels students as they plan events and community projects, such as collecting Christmas presents for children in foster care. A former student president of the Psychology club writes, “I spent multiple hours each week with Heather as she taught me leadership and organizational skills to ensure the success of the club. Her level of care and commitment to her club is unparalleled and her dedication led to record-setting club inquiries from students across campus and paved the way for Psychology Club to be one of the most prestigious clubs at CWI.” Heather was also the faculty advisor for the Psi Beta Honor Society (the Community College National Honors Society in Psychology) and under her leadership, CWI's psychology program received the Psi Beta Chapter Excellence Award.

Heather places a great deal of emphasis on the importance of student research and her students have presented posters at local and national conferences. Five have won first place at the Idaho Psychological Association Poster Session and one was an award finalist at the Rocky Mountain Psychological Association; six have been nationally recognized as Psi Beta Emerging Researchers. Heather herself regularly attends conferences and has several newsletter publications focusing on the importance of research experience at the community college level, among other topics.

Heather's departmental, regional, and national service-related contributions are far-reaching. She has played a pivotal role in building bridges for students between CWI and Boise State University, which is the college's main transfer partner. She helps ensure that junior and adjunct faculty have the mentoring and resources that they need to be successful. She oversees the curriculum for Introduction to Psychology and leads assessment efforts for the psychology program to ensure that students receive quality and inclusive instruction. Heather has additionally served as Psi Beta's Rocky Mountain Regional Vice-President. As part of this role, she has played a pivotal part in increasing chapter and member engagement in Psi Beta's annual national research project, which provides an applied approach to learning foundational scientific research skills. She serves on the editorial staff of Psychology Briefs, Psi Beta's student research journal and helps train student editors, reviews journal submissions, and promotes the journal in various ways. STP is pleased to present Heather Schoenherr with the 2023 Wayne Weiten Teaching Excellence Award.

Wilbert J. McKeachie Teaching Excellence Award

The recipient of the Wilbert J. McKeachie Teaching Excellence Award for graduate students is Skyler Mendes. Skye received her B.A. in Psychology from Providence College, her Ed.M. in Prevention Science and Practice from Harvard University, and her M.A. in Developmental Psychology from Arizona State University (ASU). She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Developmental Psychology at ASU with an expected graduation date of December 2023. Her research centers around the promotion of social and emotional wellness and prevention of internalizing symptoms and disorders in adolescents, as well as the scholarships of teaching and learning.

Skye is an exemplar of innovative teaching and students rave about her teaching style, finding her to be helpful, clear, and understanding. A professor and the Area Head of the Psychology Teaching Faculty at ASU says that from the first semester she worked with Skye, she felt like she was working with a seasoned colleague rather than a graduate student on an assistantship. “Skye has been the best Graduate Teaching Associate that I have had the privilege to work with in over 25 years of teaching at ASU…[and] is the only GTA with whom I have worked that has taught me more than I taught them,” she says. A former student writes, “she is one of the most kind, creative, engaging professors that I have had the pleasure of learning from, and she has changed my life for the better.” She has won numerous awards, including ASU's Graduate and Professional Student Association Teaching Excellence Award.

Skye goes above and beyond the typical duties of a teaching assistantship. For example, she helped to create clearer grading rubrics for the department's undergraduate TAs, supervising them to improve the interrater reliability in the grading of assignments in different classes, and helped coach them on ways to more effectively help students understand the course material. She helped transform pretest review sessions by using interactive technology that let students assess their comprehension of course content and created opportunities for students to teach one another material to increase their own understanding.

Skye works tirelessly to create a more inclusive community through attracting and supporting students. As a coteacher in ASU's Early Start multiday program (designed to increase the retention of at-risk students), she supervised peer mentors, gave lectures on enhancing metacognition, and organized projects where students did small group “teach outs” on a challenging topic in psychology to their peers. Students reported that the teach-out not only helped them better understand course material but also enabled them to become more confident in their ability to succeed in college.

Passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion, Skye created ASU's Amplified Voices Diversity Lecture Series, which has brought leading BIPOC scholars from across the country to speak to students, faculty, and staff. On a national level, she worked with a team to publish a Call to Action for an Antiracist Clinical Science paper and helped to deliver a full-day preconference workshop on Practical Strategies for Reducing Racial Disparities in Mental Health Access and Outcomes in Prevention Science at the Society for Prevention Research Annual Meeting. She has led efforts to increase the cultural diversity of undergraduate teaching assistants each semester and has provided top-notch mentorship to multiple undergraduates, involving them in research and teaching opportunities that they did not know were available to them or that they were capable of. Students share that Skye has inspired them to seek graduate training, changing the trajectory of their academic and professional lives. STP is pleased to present Skyler Mendes with the 2023 Wilbert J. McKeachie Teaching Excellence Award.

Civic Engagement Award

STP's Civic Engagement Award recognizes leadership in applying psychological science to make a difference in improving society at the local, national, and/or global levels through community involvement or by incorporating service learning into teaching. The recipient of the Civic Engagement Award is Dr. Michael Figuccio. Michael received his Ph.D. in Psychology from Boston University. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Farmingdale State College—State University of New York, and a member of the Carnegie Community Engagement committee.

Michael provides students with direct, applied learning experiences primarily based on service learning. For instance, he designed coursework that could be used to earn the credential for Child Development Associate. He also partnered with the campus childcare center to engage students in volunteer experiences, illustrating early childhood development concepts. He engaged his students in building a playground that met the developmental needs of children. As a result of his efforts, a mentoring program has been established on Farmingdale's campus to assist students in understanding and meeting the socioemotional and academic needs of typically developing children. Moreover, he has engaged his students in designing and developing a website for teens with developmental disabilities that provides work-preparation resources. The website offers information on enhancing social skills, navigating public transportation, and interviewing for a job. Michael and his students have also conducted virtual meetings with youths with developmental disabilities to discuss these topics, which has helped one of the participants obtain a job.

Throughout the pandemic, Michael has collaborated with the Community of Volunteer Educators (COVE) and the Child Cognitive Development program and has provided virtual tutoring to children. COVE is a grassroots organization formed during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide students with equitable educational opportunities. Through the program, Michael and his students have engaged in virtual tutoring sessions with a child, providing support and guidance throughout the semester.

Michael is committed to pedagogy in civic engagement, which is evident in his research. He has conducted several research projects focusing on service learning and e-service learning and has presented his findings at various conferences, including the STP's 20^th Annual Conference. His work in engaging students and studying the impact of their work in the community has been supported by over ten grants.

Michael is an educator, scholar, and practitioner who advocates civic engagement as a powerful tool for learning. He encourages his students to use their academic skills to serve their communities. He has provided numerous opportunities for his students to participate in meaningful service-learning projects, which benefit the community and enhance their educational experience. His commitment to engaged pedagogy demonstrates his passion for teaching and desire to bring about positive change in the world. As a result of these achievements, he is recognized as a leader in civic engagement. STP is pleased to present Dr. Michael Figuccio with the 2023 Civic Engagement Award.

Mentorship of Teachers Award

STP's Mentorship of Teachers Award honors those who mentor teachers of Psychology and recognizes various forms of mentoring; sharing of knowledge and expertise, support, and encouragement; contributing to opportunities and resources; and serving as a professional role model. The recipient of the Mentorship of Teachers Award is Dr. Jessica Hartnett, an Associate Professor of Psychology at Gannon University, Erie, Pennsylvania. She earned her B.S. in Psychology from Pennsylvania State University, and both her M.S. and Ph.D. in Social/Industrial-Organizational Psychology from Northern Illinois University.

Jessica has served in various leadership roles for psychology-related national and international organizations including the Scholarship of Learning and Teaching Grant Selection Committee and STP. Her colleagues attest to her always collegial and supportive nature when answering questions about teaching statistics and research methods. Her passion for helping other psychology teachers drives her to go the extra mile.

Jessica has established herself as a true expert. Students, teachers, and colleagues have shared innumerable stories of how she has inspired them. One of her colleagues comments, “In short, we teachers have to work at connecting with students, and Jess helps us all do this. We’re referring of course to Jess's popular and prominent blog, ‘Not Awful and Boring Examples for Teaching Statistics.’ This treasure trove is cited everywhere, by everyone. Not just in psychology; not just in higher ed. It's consulted by any statistics instructor from high school who wants to keep their content modern and fresh. Every talk we have heard on teaching statistics mentions it. Every article and resource on teaching statistics links to it.” Her blog has had a significant impact on teachers and educators across the country and her personal mentorship and lifelong impact on her mentees is highly recognized by others. Jessica teaches what she preaches and shows her mentees by example how to do their jobs successfully; she shares her work and wisdom wholeheartedly. STP is pleased to present Dr. Jessica Hartnett with the 2023 Mentorship of Teachers Award.

Promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award

STP's Promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award recognizes an instructor of Psychology who promotes perspectives and experiences that are not traditionally highlighted in Psychology curricula, in a reflection of broader societal power structures. The recipient of the Promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award is Dr. Milton A. Fuentes. Milton earned his B.A. in Psychology from Saint Peter's College, an M.A. in Psychology from Montclair State University, and a Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology with a specialization in Community Psychology from Rutgers University. He is currently a Professor and the Coordinator of Undergraduate Advising in the Department of Psychology at Montclair State University, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in clinical and community psychology.

In 2008, Milton secured external grant funding to create the Multicultural Psychology Scholars Program at MSU, which fosters professional development and personal growth among racially minoritized undergraduates. A decade and a half after being founded, he continues to serve as the club's advisor, providing students with a dedicated space and explicit, institutional reminder that they belong in the field of psychology. From 2018 to 2020, he also served as one of Montclair State's Community-Engaged Teaching Learning and Fellows, who work to develop campus-wide initiatives related to service learning and participatory action research.

Milton's work has also positively impacted students, educators, and researchers beyond his home institution. One of his first-author papers (Fuentes et al., 2021), focused on providing guidance in inclusive syllabus design, is the most highly cited article published in Teaching of Psychology in the past 3 years. Additionally, as the colead for the State of New Jersey's Safe and Inclusive Learning Environment Working Group, he facilitated a team effort to produce multiple guidebooks to help educators around the state effectively (1) conduct and analyze campus climate surveys, (2) foster inclusive environments through new and updated campus policies, and (3) implement the recommendations of a previous task force on campus sexual assault. Most recently, a forthcoming paper will explore the relationship between the Open Science movement and advancing antiracist practices in psychological science.

Milton has already gained wide recognition for his sustained commitment to practicing culturally responsive teaching and mentoring and advocating for inclusive learning environments for all. He received a Presidential Citation from the American Psychological Association in 2015, the New Jersey Psychological Association's Distinguished Faculty Award in 2021, and was named a Fellow of the American Psychological Association in 2022. STP is pleased to present Dr. Milton A. Fuentes with the 2023 Promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award.