Personalities

Arizona State University honored Leona S. Aiken, PhD, with a President’s Professor Award, which recognizes tenured faculty who excel at engaging undergraduate students through enthusiasm and innovative teaching. Aiken, a quantitative psychologist, has taught statistics for 40 years.

The Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media named APA assistant executive director for marketing business development David Ballard, PsyD, MBA, to its external advisory board. Ballard is now one of 30 advisers who will help the clinic develop strategies to encourage hospitals, physicians, patients and others in the medical profession to communicate with each other through social media.

The University of Rhode Island awarded Martha E. Banks, PhD, with a 2010 President’s Distinguished Achievement Award. Banks is a distinguished neuropsychology researcher, practitioner, author, lecturer and educator. She’s particularly known for her work exploring from a feminist perspective the issues faced by women with disabilities.

On July 1, cognitive psychologist Jamshed Bharucha, PhD, will take over as president of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Bharucha comes to The Cooper Union after serving as provost at Tufts University, where research output doubled during his tenure. An amateur violinist, Bharucha has conducted extensive research on music perception.

The U.S. Department of Defense Psychological Health Research Program has awarded Clemson University psychologist Thomas Britt, PhD, a $ 1.15 million grant to fund a three-year research study on why too few military personnel seek mental health treatment for combat stress. Britt and colleagues will use the funds to conduct interviews, focus groups and a longitudinal survey of soldiers. The team will use the data to design an intervention to connect more soldiers with treatment. As an active-duty research psychologist for the U.S. Army from 1994 to 1997, Britt studied stress, motivation and health among soldiers stationed in Germany, Saudi Arabia, Bosnia, Hungary and Kazakhstan.

The National Hispanic Media Coalition honored educational psychologist Isabel Gómez-Bassols, EdD, for outstanding service to the Latino community through her national daily call-in radio talk show. Known to her thousands of daily listeners as “la Doctora Isabel, el Angel de la Radio,” Gómez-Bassols received the Outstanding Service and Commitment to the Latino Community Impact Award at the coalition’s 14th Annual Impact Awards ceremony Feb. 25 in Beverly Hills, Calif.

The American Evaluation Association elected educational psychologist Jennifer C. Greene, PhD, as its 2011 president. AEA works to improve evaluation methods and promote the use of evaluation as a way to improve programs and organizations, policies and personnel. Greene is a professor in the department of educational psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with three decades of experience as an evaluator and educator.

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development has awarded Gregory A. Fabiano, PhD, with a $2.8 million grant to study ways improve communication between teens with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and their parents. The study will test a new program that guides parents on teaching their teens to drive.