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Ilana Olin |
Mary Beth Bidgood |
Ryan Fulgham
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Thania Lloyd
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Tamara Voxnaes |
Rebecca McAlister and
Elena Dujour |
OU Students Receive Awards at GPA 2009
The Georgia Psychological Association held its annual meeting in Atlanta on Saturday, May 18, 2009. Each year, conference organizers invite students at every college and university across the state to submit original research for a juried competition. This year, seven OU students, accompanied by Professors Leah Zinner and John Carton, attended the conference.
The students presented their research in a two-hour poster session. Each student’s poster was reviewed by at least two jurors on a variety of criteria and every student had to orally defend their research to the jurors. Students also were questioned by psychologists attending the conference. The awards committee selected three finalists, from which they selected a single undergraduate student for “best research” award. The committee also selected best research awards in several specific clinical practice areas.
This year, Oglethorpe students Ilana Olin, Ryan Fulgham, and Tamara Voxnaes were selected as finalists for the overall best research award. After further deliberation, the committee awarded the top research prize to Ilana Olin for her study on perfectionism, social comparisons, and anxiety. In a separate clinical practice area award, OU student Mary Beth Bidgood took home first place for her research on nutrition, body weight, and food advertisements.
Research experience is an important component of the OU Psychology Department curriculum. All majors complete a full year of research training and many complete additional research projects under the supervision of a faculty member. Students are routinely encouraged to submit their work for peer review at professional conferences. Research experience is widely considered to be a critical factor for admission to graduate programs in the sciences and for entering research-related careers.
OU students who attended the GPA conference and the title of their projects include:
- Mary Beth Bidgood: “Selling nutrition and junk food: The effect of model body weight on food advertisement effectiveness”
- Elena Dujour and Rebecca McAlister: “Do Situational and Dispositional Embarrassment Decline as we Age?”
- Ryan Fulgham: “Emotional Intelligence and the Regulation of Negative Affect”
- Thania Lloyd: “The Red Effect: Does Red Enhance Men’s Attraction to Women of Various Levels of Attractiveness?”
- Ilana Olin: “Perfectionism & Anxiety: The Effects of Expectations and Comparisons”
- Tamara Voxnaes: “Using a Brick to Win: The Effects of Competition and Identifiability on Social Loafing”
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