Psychology Department

Accomplishments for Academic Year 2004-2005

Some Recent Student Admitted to Graduate or Professional Schools

Erica Hauck, 2005, has been accepted into the Ph.D. program at Oklahoma University in Industrial/organization Psychology.

Heidi Gravelle, 2005, was accepted for the School Psychology master's program at Utah State University.

Lindsey Joyce, 2004, was accepted for the Ph.D Neuroscience program in psychology at NDSU.

Angie Larson, 2004, has been admitted to the University of Minnesota's Masters of Public Health program under the Community Health Education subtrack for the Fall 2005 term.

Victoria Hogen, 2003, was accepted and began the Couples and Family Therapy Graduate program at NDSU in Fall 2004

Maggie Vaughn, 2004, was accepted for the  MA program in Conflict
Resolution at the University of Denver.

Jessica (Olson) Rengstorf has been accepted and will attend law school at Thomas Jefferson in San Diego.

Becky Loser, 2004, was accepted and will start the PsyD Marriage and Family Therapy program at Argosy University in the Twin Cities in Fall 2005.

Ryan Goldenstein, 2005, was accepted and will start the clinical PsyD program at Argosy University in Phoenix in Fall 2005.

Katherine Wilson, 2005, was accepted and will start the Speech Pathology Masters programs at MSUM in Fall 2005.

Steph Corneliussen, 2004, was accepted and will start the clinical PsyD program at the Minnesota School of Professional Psychology in Argosy University in the Twin Cities in Fall 2005.

Lindsey Randstrom, 2005, was accepted into the masters program in clinical psychology at NDSU.

Midwestern Psychology Conference 2005

A record number of students attended the Midwest Psychological Association (MPA) meeting in Chicago this year. Twelve undergraduates and two faculty members will represent MSUM. Six groups will be presenting their work, including Troy Ertelt "Social evaluations of juvenile victims of childhood sexual abuse"; Jason Nicholas "Flow theory, activities, and personality"; Troy Ertelt and Angell Vollmer "The effect of emotional content on encoding and retrieving auditory information"; Amanda Neil and Troy Ertelt "Earwitness identification: Influence of regional and language accents on identification accuracy"; Katie Nylander and Elizabeth Tweet "Emotion referencing: Toddlers' reactions to music"; and EmJ Hugh "The role of sound and spelling information in spoken word recognition".
 

Red River Psychology Conference 2005

The 20th annual Red River Psychology Conference was held at MSUM on April 7 & 8, 2005. The conference included 47 student paper and poster presentations, with an estimated 150 students and faculty from MSUM, NDSU, Concordia College, Jamestown College, Minot State, South Dakota State, and St. Cloud State Universities. The keynote speaker was Dr. David Matsumoto from San Francisco State University. His evening keynote address “The Cultural Attribution Fallacy” was attended by approximately 150 people. A new attraction at this year’s conference was The Human Race Machine, which allows the user to view their face as a different race, age, or morph together a couple to show their offspring. Students and staff from across campus lined up both in the department and at the CMU ballroom to experience this thoughtful and fun activity. For conference information, including a list of sponsors, see the website at www.mnstate/edu/psichi/redriver2005.htm.

The following students and faculty presented at the 2005 Red River Psychology Conference at MSUM in April 2005: 

• Alyson Flemming (The effect of auditory distraction on visual and acoustic encoding)
• Kylie B. Rogalla (The relationship between self-esteem and blood pressure in males and females)
• Erica L. Hauck (A levels of processing approach to context effects)
• Troy W. Ertelt (Adolescent sex offenders: A review of recent literature
• Emily J. Hugh, Lindsay Lass, & Christine Malone (Relationships underlying spoken word recognition)
• Amy Jo Green ( Language predictors of cognitive academic language proficiency: A comparison of American Indian and non-American Indian students)
• Sheena Nelson (The effects gender, script type, and question design have on confidence levels when generating responses to scripts)
• Katie Nylander & Beth Tweet (Emotion referencing: Infant's reaction to music)
• Jason Nicholas (A new conceptualization of flow)
• Jonathan L. Morgan, Gary S. Nickell & Verlin B. Hinsz (NDSU) (Employees' willingness to prevent intentional food contamination)

Dr. Gary Nickell Spring 2005

Gary Nickell, Psychology, co-presented a research posters at the Society for Industrial and Organization Psychology conference in LA, April 16. This research was conducted in collaboration with Dr. Verlin Hinsz and Dr. Ernest Park from the Psychology department at NDSU. The poster was titled “Exploring the Differences between Promotion and Prevention Focused Employees"

Gary Nickell, Psychology, co-authored a paper titled "Positive reactions to working in groups in a study of group and individual goal decision making" with Dr. Verlin Hinsz at North Dakota State University. The paper was published in the December 2004 issue of the journal Group Dynamics.

A. Derick Dalhouse, Psychology, went to the 34th Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, October 23-27, 2004 in San Diego California. Two students, Lindsey Joyce and Laura Zapata Haak went with him. While at the meeting they presented a poster entitled, ANTIHYPERTENSIVE DRUGS ON MEMBRANE FLUIDITY AND BLOOD PRESSURE OF HYPERTENSIVE AND NORMOTENSIVE RATS. The poster was co-authored by A. D. Dalhouse, L. Joyce, L. Zapata Haak (Psychology) and A.Pezeshk (Chemistry).

The Psychology Department was awarded a $5000 Instructional Improvement grant to create a new Psychology Student Center. The grant written by Dr. Nawrot provided funds to renovate BR360A. The Psychology Student Center opened Nov. 2004. The Psychology Student Center in BR 360A opened its doors in October, 2005. The Student Center brings the many departmental resources for psychology students into a central location that is attractive and convenient. The Psychology Student Center serves the over 200 current psychology majors, which includes 50 seniors approaching graduation, 60 members of Psychology Club, and students who are invited to join Psi Chi, the National Honor Society in Psychology. The Center is also a valuable tool for the attraction and retention of prospective students and new majors.