Vandy goes Harry Potter!
Ann Neely, associate professor of the practice of teaching and learning, and Georgene Troseth, associate professor of psychology, led a Harry Potter-themed first-year writing seminar in psychology in England over spring break. The class included discussion of such topics as temperament, real orphans and psychopathology. They took in a performance of Matilda: The Musical in London’s West End and toured the Harry Potter movie sets at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden.
Longtime Peabody staff member Chris LaFevor, BS’69, has retired. She made her mark as a student, and then as assistant to the graduate dean, a dissertation editor, an administrator, and since 1991, director of the Office of Teacher Licensure. She has been affiliated with Peabody for 48 years, except for a year teaching high school in Sacramento, Calif., and a year and a half serving in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua. Michael W. Jackson, former senior director of institutional research and assessment at Oklahoma City University, serves as the new director of licensure, effectiveness and accreditation.
Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, MS’11, a community research and action graduate student, is the recipient of a $20,000 award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Public Health Law Research Institute to fund her dissertation fieldwork. Her research looks at the health effect of drug laws and welfare reform on people who are HIV-positive.
Paul Morphy, a graduate student in special education, was chosen to present his paper, “Writing to Read and Relate,” as part of the Asa G. Hilliard III and Barbara A. Sizemore Research Institute on African Americans and Education at the AERA annual meeting in San Francisco. The Bonsal Education Research Entrepreneurship Award funded his research.
Four students in psychological sciences, including Peabody graduate students Colleen Russo and Lewis Baker, have won prestigious National Science Foundation fellowships. Russo’s $90,000 fellowship will support her research of how verbal bullying in children’s television influences young viewers. Her faculty adviser is Associate Professor of Psychology Georgene Troseth. Baker’s $90,000 fellowship will support his study of the “change blindness” phenomenon, the inability to perceive relatively large changes in the environment. His adviser is Dan Levin, professor of psychology and human development.
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