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Alumni NewsPage 12William O’Donohue (Clinical Psychology, 1986, advisor James Geer) has co-authored thispopular book. He tells us it is his 50th book!Bill is currently Professor of Psychology, and Director ofthe Victims of Crime Treatment Center at the University ofNevada, Reno.For more about Bill, htmlMelanie Greenberg (Clinical Psychology, 1992, advisor Art Stone), formerly at Alliant International University in San Diego, is now a Health Science Research Specialist at the VA in La JollaCalifornia, and has an adjunct clinical faculty position at UC San Diego.Melanie is working with Hamp Atkinson, a psychiatrist, on some studies regarding treatment ofchronic back pain (i.e., behavioral and medication.) She coordinates the research and is involvedin the writing of manuscripts and grants. She plans on expanding into the study of the effects ofyoga on chronic pelvic pain.Ted Beauchaine (Clinical, 2000, advisor Zvi Strassberg) was just awarded the annual Joseph Zubinmemorial fund award for a young investigator in psychopathology, which is jointly administered by Columbia University and the University of Pittsburgh. Ted is currently an Associate Professor of Psychology atthe University of Washington. Ted is the second Stony Brook grad to get the award in the last four years;Ann Kring (Clinical, 1990, advisor John Neale) won it four years ago.Debra Mashek (Social/Health Psychology, 2002, advisor Art Aron) who is now Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvey Mudd College, is to be awarded the inauguralJane S. Halonen Early Career Teaching award by the Society for the Teaching of Psychology, a Division of the American Psychological Association. The award recognizes thefirst five years of full-time teaching by a faculty member at any level and will be given outto one recipient per year. This is a wonderful honor and recognizes Professor Mashekfor the impressive contributions she makes in the classroom and in her scholarly work.We have all benefited from the vibrant and thoughtful contributions she makes to ourcommuity and it is wonderful to see that her impact extends far beyond the ClaremontColleges as well.12

Alumni NewsPage 13Allen Azizian (Biopsychology, 2004, advisor Nancy Squires)Dear Nancy,I am still with the California Departmental of Mental Health, Coalinga State Hospital. This is California’s newest state mental health hospital designed for the treatment of sexually violent predators.Your readers may be aware that Ted Carr’s work in Positive Behavioral Support(PBS) is a major component of California’s mandated Enhancement Plan. His expanding vision of PBS is a hot topic here and is making a dramatic impact in treatment of people with mental illness. I should note that graduate work in a department where Ted Carr is a professor was instrumental in placing me in a seniorlevel position. I confessed repeatedly that with the exception of exchanging hellos,I had no other interactions with Ted’s lab or work. Nonetheless, graduating froma university where PBS was founded played a major factor. We are recruiting fortwo positions (listed in APA and APS) and Stony Brook affiliation is a plus!Allen and his two daughters,Nareh and SosehI have received a Fulbright grant and will be going to Armenia for teaching/research in Yerevan’s Medical School. In light ofthe PBS infection, I will most likely work in implementing a program related to intellectual disabilities. All the girls are doingwell and will be joining me during the grant period.Warm regards,AllenAllen Azizian, PhDAdjunct Assistant Professor of PsychologyUniversity of Southern CaliforniaGeralyn Datz (Clinical, 2003, advisor Nancy Squires)Hi Nancy:I think I get the award for longest reply time!I am doing great. I am sad I missed the deadline for the last newsletter and didn’t get to includeour new baby, Cortez. Will have to catch the next one! Also, wanted to let you know and otherstony brook alum know that I started a SB Grad Facebook page (“SB Grad Psych”) for all SBpsych grads who are on FB. We already have 25 members! Get the word out and also includein the next newsletter, if you don’t mind. It’s a great way to network easily.As for professionally, I am still working in pain mgmt and loving it. I am a medical psychologist,and interface with rehab and physicians on a daily basis. I really love what I do.Hope all is well on your end .Best,Geralyn13

Alumni NewsPage 14From Elizabeth Gaudino-Goering (Biopsychology,1995, advisor Nancy Squires)Beth now teaches psychology full time at Nassau Community College. She sends a picture of her three childrenfrom last Christmas. From left to right they are Finn, whois 6, Aidan, who is 2, and Ailish, who is 9.Cheryl Woods-Giscombe (Social/Health, 2005, advisor Marci Lobel)From Marci, in May:Cheryl gave birth to Zola!! Mom and baby are both well, as are Dad Kessonga andbig sister Zuri. Zola means tranquil, and Cheryl reports that it is a fitting name for herwonderful new daughter.What's more, Cheryl was recently offered and accepted a position as Assistant Professor in the School of Nursing at UNC Chapel Hill (one of the most prestigious nursing schools in the country). Here's an excerpt from the impressive announcementsent by the Chapel Hill SON:“Dr. Giscombé began her career with a BA in psychology at NC Central Universityand subsequently earned her BS in nursing and master's degree in psychology from SUNY Stony Brook inNew York. In 2005, she completed a PhD in Social/Health Psychology at SUNY Stony Brook and began apost-doctoral fellowship here at UNC-Chapel Hill School of Nursing, working with Drs. Debra Barksdale andLinda Beeber. She extended her post-doctoral period in order to complete the master's degree in our psychmental health nurse practitioner option, so she will shortly be our alumna as well. Dr. Giscombé's researchfocuses on stress-related health disparities and biopsychosocial, cultural and historical determinants of mental health outcomes in African-American women. She conducted her dissertation research on AfricanAmerican women's well-being with a grant from the American Psychological Association. During her postdoctoral fellowship, she served as a research associate in the Carolina Lupus Study, and conducted researchon "superwomen schema" with a grant from our Center for Innovation in Health Disparities Research. Shesuccessfully competed for an R21 NIH grant, "A mindfulness-based intervention to reduce diabetes risk in pre-diabetic African-Americans," that will begin soon with funding from the National Center for Complimentaryand Alternative Medicine.”14

In memoriamPage 15In MemoriamAnna TverskoyMarch 2009From Dan O’Leary, Director of Clinical Training:There are no simple explanations for such tragic events but we can express our sorrow to Anna's loved ones and close friends. To try to put her career in some perspective, I got Anna's file and found the following:Anna was born in Ukraine in 1978, and she came to the US with her family in 1988.She graduated from NYU in 1999 with a GPA of 3.80; she had an award wining honors thesis, and she later worked as a research assistant for Dr. Aron Beck at the University of Pennsylvania. Anna had superb GRE scores, and she received a GraduateCouncil Fellowship at Stony Brook based on her stellar record.Anna completed her internship at the Adult Psychology Track at LIJ.She completed her requirements for the Ph.D. on 7/23/07. Her dissertation was onthe roles of attachment, adjustment, and problem solving ability in adolescent friendships, and her committee members were Tom D'Zurilla (Dissertation Advisor),Joanne Davila, Harriet Waters, and Evelyn Bromet.She wrote to Marilyn Wollmuth on January 11, 2008 indicating that she was in Cologne Germany that year where her husband was doing research. During that year,she had a job teaching English, and she was planning to be back in the US and lookfor a hospital job in September 2008.According to information I received from Pat Urbelis, Anna died following a biopsyand a reported accidental severing of the vena cava.Anna was married to Brandon Roth; their son, Taren, is about 3 yrs old.15

Department in the NewsPage 16GENERAL UNIVERSITY NEWSStony Brook University Professors Receive 1.5 Million Grant To Study Ways To Make The Internet More Accessible ToPeople With Visual ImpairmentsSTONY BROOK, N.Y., December 5, 2008 – Stony Brook University computer science professors ,Dr. I.V. Ramakrishnanand Dr. Amanda Stent, and psychology professor Susan Brennan have received a 1.5 million National Science Foundation grant to study ways to make the Internet more accessible and user-friendly to people who are visually impaired orblind.The Internet has become an essential tool for accessing information and performing everyday tasks such as banking, paying bills, shopping and communicating. However, the primary method of interaction over the Internet is through graphicalbrowsers designed for visual navigation, which seriously limit access for people with impaired vision or blindness. In theU.S. alone, there are approximately10 million visually impaired and blind people.“Existing assistive technology for non-visual Internet access typically forces blind or visually impaired users into an inefficient, sequential mode of information access,” said Ramakrishnan. “To do better, we need to build computational modelsto represent the structure of web pages and online transactions, and to present them effectively using non-visual modalities. In addition, we need to better understand how users’ mental models for online transactions are built and utilized; wethen need to align the computational models with the users’ mental models, so as to combine their strengths and significantly improve the efficiency of non-visual interactions.”The ultimate goal of Ramakrishnan’s research is to empower blind and visually-impaired to lead completely independentlives with the aid of the Internet. Copyright 2008 by Stony Brook UniversityThe Effect of Red on Avoidance Behavior in Achievement ContextsPersonality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 35, No. 3, 365-375 (2009)DOI: 10.1177/0146167208328330Andrew J. ElliotUniversity of Rochester, andye@psych.rochester.eduMarkus A. MaierUniversity of MunichMartin J. BinserUniversity of MunichRon FriedmanUniversity of RochesterReinhard PekrunUniversity of MunichMarkus (Social/Health Psychology and the Professional Education Program) received a lot of attention for this research recently, including an interview on NPR: Id 10030158216

Department in the NewsPage 17Because of a new revenue-sharing agreement, the Department now gets a portion of the tuition revenue during summersession. So we added to our standard offerings, and we are also experimenting with new one-credit seminars that wehope will be attractive to the community. Here’s one of our flyers.17

Department in the NewsPage 18NEW MA PROGRAM IN PSYCHOLOGY:New master’s and BA/MA programs also come under the new revenue-sharing program. Psychology was ahead ofthe curve here, and has admitted its first MA class for this summer. There are 15 highly-talented students in the firstclass. They will graduate with the MA in Spring 2010.DESCRIPTION OF MA IN PSYCHOLOGY3/18/09MA program in two summer sessions in Summer ’09 plus two academic semesters (F ‘09/S ’10):’10)Highly qualified seniors will be admitted to the MA for Fall 2009. We anticipate an entering class of 15-20 students. In Summer 2009 they will take two courses: PSY 501 (Graduate Statistics) and PSY 610 (special topics) which will be offered as aproseminar that gives an introduction to the topics of all four program areas (Biopsychology, Clinical, Experimental, and Social/Health).Focus of the program: Using the existing course structure, the new curriculum will accomplish several goals: It will provide a prestigious five-year degree for the best qualified of our undergraduates.It will provide an advanced education that will transfer well either to a career right after graduation or to furthergraduate education in a variety of fields such as law, business, medical school, and social work, as well as to thePh.D. in psychology.This is not an automatic entryway into the Ph.D. programs in Psychology at SBU, which remain nationally attractiveand very competitive.The students in the MA program will receive traditional grounding in psychology via electives chosen from our regularly-offered graduate courses. In addition they will get: A special 610 proseminar that provides an advanced overview of the field of psychology A Director specifically for the MA program who is there for consultation on course selection, career opportunities and other mattersTwo semesters of a one credit professional development seminar (also including students from the Ph.D.programs), that specifically addresses concerns about graduate school, career and personal choices, professional presentation, etc.The opportunity to take the Teaching Seminar (with Ph.D. students) in the spring of the final year; in parallel with this course, the MA students will assist the TAs in an undergraduate course. Each semester every student will choose one of the three “brown bag” seminars to attend (Social, Cognitive/Experimental, or Biopsychology). These are informal weekly meeting where graduate students inthose areas present their current research. Attendance at “First Year Lectures” which is a forum for all first year students to hear faculty members talkabout their ongoing research. Opportunity to engage in research in a faculty member’s lab.Applications will be evaluated on the basis of GPA (minimum 3.25), letters of recommendation, and fitness of theapplicant’s goals with the goals of the program.The GRE’s are NOT required.COMPLETION OF THE PROGRAM will be contingent on completion of 30 credits with at least a 3.0 GPA, as per theregulations of the Graduate School. 18

Faculty NewsPage 19In March I had a very pleasant surprise, an email from Professor Emeritus DAVID GLASS. I asked him to update us onwhat he has been doing since leaving Stony Brook.Nancy,You asked for an overview of what I’ve been up to over the past few years.I’ll try to comply as concisely as possible. I left Stony Brook at the end of 1993 and accepted an appointment as Visiting Professor in the Psychology Department and Institute for Health, Rutgers (New Brunswick). I remained there until 1996, working withHoward Leventhal on negative affect and physical-symptom reporting. During that time, I also published two papers on burnoutand depression in hospital nurses. I had begun work on this topic in Stony Brook with Dan McKnight. He received his Ph. D.based, in part, on data in those papers.After leaving Rutgers, I did research consulting for the East Orange V.A., and then for several lawyers who were preparing trialbriefs concerned with the effects of community noise on behavior and physiology. In 1997, I became Interim Director of Research at the Kessler Medical Institute in West Orange, New Jersey. I did this for a couple of years until they appointed a permanent director who was active in physical rehab research. The four years beginning with 1999 were relatively quiet, with onlyoccasional consultations relating to behavior and health. I devoted a great deal of time to developing my own physical fitnessthrough regular work-outs in a gym I joined in 1995. I have continued doing this over succeeding years.In 2005, I decided to update myself on what was happening in environmental psychology and health psychology. I did thisthrough systematic reading of the relevant literature, paying special attention to the work of my former students and postdoctoral fellows. A number of them are major contributors to the literature on stress and cardiovascular disease, stress andimmune functioning (including cancer and the common cold), the psychology of physical symptoms, and personality and health.This period of reading led me to the idea of designing a course for advanced undergraduate psychology students that focuseson applications of social psychology during the last 35 years. I just completed a syllabus for this course and have made an initial approach to the Psychology Chair at Manhattan College. I am waiting to hear from him.My wife and I left Manhattan a year ago and took an apartment in Riverdale on the 21st floor, overlooking the Hudson and thePalisades. It’s a twenty minute walk to the College.My building has a gym so I can continue my fitness regimen 4 mornings each week. Teaching the course and working out atthe gym will provide a nice balance for my other less time-consuming weekly activities - - namely, dinners in Manhattan andactive involvement in Church activities. Kathy and I are now members of the Church of the Incarnation on Madison Avenue and35th Street.Well, this email has turned out to be much longer than I intended. But, it does give you an idea of what I have been doing personally and professionally since my retirement from Stony Brook.With the warmest regards,DavidP.S. In May David wrote that he will be teaching a course on Applications of Social Psychology at Fordham University (RoseHill Campus) in Spring 2010. It is designed for advanced undergraduate psych majors.19

Faculty NewsPage 20BOOKS BOOKS BOOKSJUST PUBLISHED:O'Leary, K. D. & Woodin, E. M. , Eds. (2009). Psychological and PhysicalAggression in Couples: Causes and Interventions. Washington, D. C. AmericanPsychological Association.Erica Woodin received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology in 2007, and is now a(very happy) member of the faculty of the Psychology Department of the Universityof Victoria in Canada.Dan O’Leary holds the title of Distinguished Professor. He is our Director of Clinical Training, and in addition to the new b

US News Graduate Program Rankings, 2009-10 Stony Brook has thirteen programs ranked in the top 50: clinical psychology (9) physician's assistant (11) physics (23) mathematics (24) geology/earth science (28) nursing-midwifery (29) computer science (31) political science (33) sociology (41) medical school-for primary care (45)