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James O. Benedict Senior Teaching Award
This award is named for faculty member James O. Benedict, and honors a senior who has demonstrated interest in pursuing a career in higher education in the field of Psychology, or who has served as a teaching assistant in Psychology while an undergraduate student. Once endowed, this award will become a scholarship will provide funds annually to a deserving student.
You can contribute to this fund by making a donation online as described at http://psyc.jmu.edu/ug/visitors/needs.html. When making your donation please specify that your donation is intended to contribute to the James O. Benedict Scholarship (Account 25217) in the “Other Designation” field on the form.
2009 Award Recipients
- Amanda Sorg
Amanda Sorg - Amanda is currently a senior psychology major in the behavior analysis concentration. She has worked in Dr. Irons lab for several semesters and is currently conducting an honors thesis under the supervision of Dr. Irons and Dr. Saville. Her thesis examines the extent to which clinical and behavioral measures of impulsivity are related and she is collecting data from a community sample of adolescents with ADHD. Amanda has served as a teaching assistant for Dr. Serdikoff’s Psychology of Learning course and for Dr. Evans’ Preparing for a Job in Psychology course. Amanda also functioned as teaching assistant to Dr. Irons’ research methods as part of her role in a study of contingency management in the classroom. In addition, Amanda has contributed to a number of service events through her affiliations with Peer Advising and Phi Sigma Pi Honor Fraternity. Amanda plans to pursue graduate school in applied behavior analysis. She would like to become a rehabilitative psychologist and work with autistic children. She is interested in pursuing her doctorate and teaching later in her career.
Past Award Recipients
2006
- Elizabeth Dalianis is completing the Behavior Analysis Concentration and a minor in Criminal Justice along with her BS in Psychology. She became very interested in studying the behavioral instructional technology called Interteaching after using the technique in her Psychological Statistics, Psychological Research Methods, and Psychology of Learning classes. Elizabeth has served as an Undergraduate Teaching Assistant (UTA) for Introduction to Behavior Analysis, Psychological Research Methods, and Psychology of Learning – all classes where interteaching is used. Additionally, she has been a member of several research teams supervised by Drs. Bryan Saville, Tracy Zinn, and Sherry Serdikoff where scholarship of teaching has been the focus and has been co-author on several posters at professional conferences where the results of these studies have been reported. Elizabeth is completing an Honors Thesis that explores factors that can influence students’ perceptions about Interteaching and is intending to present her data at the 2007 meeting of the Association for Behavior Analysis. She is a member of Psi Chi, EPA, ABA, SEABA, MABA, and VABA and is hoping to enter a graduate program in behavior analysis next fall.
