UAB Psychology Update

UPDATE

#1 UAB PSYCHOLOGY Spring 2016

Ranked #1 Up-and-Coming Undergraduate Psychology Program in the South

INSIDE

THIS ISSUE

ON THE COVER The much-anticipated new Hill Student Center on the University of Alabama at Birmingham campus opened Wednesday, Jan. 20.

With 162,000 square feet of space for student activities, gatherings and services, the Hill Student Center will provide meeting, conference and auditorium space; student organization spaces; upgraded dining facilities including Full Moon Bar-B-Que, Mein Bowl, Starbucks and Panera Bread; a ballroom that can be divided into four sections; a stadium-style theater; a two-story bookstore; a technology store; the Campus Visit Center; and the One-Stop Student Service center for admissions, course registration, student accounting, parking, financial aid and student ID functions.

ON THE

GREEN

Thanks go to the many staff members and students who designed this year’s Homecoming door (and wall!) in Campbell Hall/4th floor. The Department of Psychology took home first prize in the competition.

Pictured: UAB Psychology Alumna and Program Coordinator (Neuroinflammation, Pain & Fatigue Lab) Kate Wesson-Sides accepts our award from Dean Palazzo!

students, faculty, alumni and friends of the

UAB PSYCHOLOGY UPDATE EXECUTIVE EDITOR Karlene Ball, Ph.D. EDITOR + CONTENT Mary Frances Thetford, M.Ed. CONTENT + DESIGN Lauren Vardaman

FOLLOW UAB PSYCHOLOGY

2 PSYCHOLOGY UPDATE // SPRING 2016

STRIVING FOR

DR. ZINA TROST Named 2016 John C. Liebeskind Early Career Scholar Award from AmericanPainSociety.org

DR. DESPINA STAVRINOS Receives Routh Early Career Award from UAB News by Katherine Shonesy

Despina Stavrinos, Ph.D., has been selected to receive the Routh Early Career Award from the Society of Pediatric Psychology. This national award recognizes an early career member of the society who has made significant contributions to the field of pediatric psychology in research, clinical training and service.

Stavrinos, an assistant professor in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Psychology, studies distracted driving, with particular attention to at-risk populations. She serves as the director of the Translational Research for Injury Prevention, or TRIP, laboratory.

The focus of the lab’s research is the prevention and control of unintentional injuries that result from motor vehicle crashes.

The TRIP lab offers students at various levels of training, from high school to postdoctoral, and from various disciplines, the opportunity to conduct high-quality behavioral research. Since its establishment in 2009, nearly 100 students have been trained under Stavrinos’ mentorship. The award will be presented at the Society of Pediatric Psychology’s annual conference in April.

Dr. Stavrinos’ TRIP Lab won 1st place in the 2015 Graduate Student Research Exchange poster competition. Students and TRIP lab members Haley Johnson and Benjamin McManus also won first prize in their divisions.

Dr. Trost graduated from Fordham University in New York and subsequently completed her PhD in Clinical Health Psychology at Ohio University, a residency in Rehabilitation Psychology at University of Washington Medical Center, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the McGill University Alan Edwards Pain Centre. She is currently starting a new position in the Medical Psychology Clinical Program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Dr. Trost is the recent recipient of the International Association for the Study of Pain Early Career Research Grant, the American Pain Society Sharon Keller Chronic Pain Research Grant, the IASP International Collaborative Research Grant, and most recently the North American Spine Society Young Investigator Clinical Research Grant.

Her work focuses on risk factors for development of musculoskeletal disability, including pain-related fear and perceptions of injustice, as well as development of gaming/virtual reality interventions to mitigate these risk factors in pain and physical trauma populations.

SPRING 2016 // PSYCHOLOGY UPDATE 3

Early Mentorship, CONTINUED COMMITMENT Kate Wesson-Sides, a UAB Psychology graduate, and Program Coordinator for the UAB Neuroinflammation, Pain & Fatigue Lab, currently serves as Supervising Scientist as she mentors two high school students who have recently received recognition for their work in UAB Psychology labs. Ava Michl and Alexis Lambert are Seniors at the Alabama School of Fine Arts. Several area schools, including ASFA, now require research curriculum in order for students to graduate with honors.

Ava Michl is a member of Dr. Burel Goodin’s Lab and Alexis Lambert is a member of Dr. Christianne Strang’s lab. Both students are on campus about 10 hours per week.

Due to their age and other governing body restrictions the students observe research being completed and then use a computer to work with either de-identified human data or digital images of animal cells. Ava was named a finalist in the Gorgas Research Competition after she won 1st place at both the Alabama Junior Science and Central Alabama Science Fairs. She will compete later this Spring in the national competitions. Ava and Alexis will start classes next Fall at UAB as Neuroscience majors in the University Honors Program. (Pictured Above: Ava Michl, Kate Wesson-Sides, Alexis Lambert)

Undergraduate Receives Prestigous HONOR Paris McClendon, UHP Junior and Psychology major was awarded the "Distinguished Black Student Leader Award for the 2015-2016" academic year.

Paris was honored at a recent black-tie Black Excellence Gala and Dinner at the UAB National Alumni Society House.

4 PSYCHOLOGY UPDATE // SPRING 2016

from ArtsBham.org, Review by Theodore Haddin

“Readers who pick up this new book by Bob Wendorf, PsyD, will find ideas, strategies and experience that will serve them long after one reading. Of its 16 chapters, 15 recount numerous case histories and lives of patients Wendorf has seen over years of experience as a psychotherapist in clinics and hospitals, and most recently, as an adjunct professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in the Department of Psychology.

‘Tales from the Couch’ is his title, though he says there was no couch but the convenient reference to Sigmund Freud’s.” - Theodore Haddin “Tales from the Couch,” by Bob Wendorf, PsyD, New York, Carrel Books, 2015. $34.99.

To read more, visit www.artsbham.com

from Dr. Michael Sloane

Paris joined the University Honors Program in fall 2013 from Hattiesburg High School in Mississippi. A talented writer and a fixture in high school debate circles in Mississippi, Paris was active in the BamaCovered grassroots movement here in Birmingham and was part of a panel presentation on that initiative at an annual National Collegiate Honors conference in Denver.

IN REVIEW

UAB ANST

A BIG THANK YOU

The department would like to sincerely thank Dr. Sylvie Mrug for her years of service as Chair of the Psychology Colloquium Series. We would like to welcome Dr. Rajesh Kana as the new Chairman of this program to start in Fall 2016. This program has been ongoing since 2002 where Dr. David Schwebel served as the first Committee Chairman.

Members of the Association of Neuropsychology Students in Training (ANST) at the annual Walk to End Alzheimer’s at Railroad Park where they along withUAB Neuropsychology raised $650 for Alzheimer’s research.

IN THE LAB

Research

WITH DR. ROB SORGE from Kaleidoscope, by Tamara Imam

A research team at UAB headed by Robert Sorge, Ph.D. has shown that patients who suffer from chronic pain are more susceptible to certain health issues if they practice poor diet habits.

“Pain is the number one reason that people see a doctor.

Addiction and misuse of pain medication is also the number one controlled-substance problem in the US,” Sorge said. “Given these two findings, pain is of vital importance to medicine and learning how our lifestyle affects our pain and our recovery from injury (accidental or surgical) is equally as important.”

When coupled with obesity, chronic pain becomes more intense and prolonged. According to the Arthritis Foundation, obesity raises the risk of developing certain types of arthritis and increases chronic joint pain for those who already have arthritis.

Sorge and his team ultimately aimed to investigate the correlation between obesity and chronic pain, two ailments that are considered comorbid and are rising in prevalence in the United States. For instance, one in five Americans live with arthritis, but according to the Centers for Disease Control, that number rises to one in three for obese people, and two out of three Americans are overweight or obese.

The team focused particularly on the effects of the Total Western Diet on mice. TWD foods generally have fewer calories from protein and more calories from carbohydrates and fats.

The researchers fed the mice TWD foods for 13 weeks to investigate the physiological impacts of a nutritionally poor diet. At the end of the trial period, the TWD-fed mice showed an increase in fat mass and a decrease in lean mass. The mice also showed an increase in systemic inflammatory responses and in the release of leptin, a hormone that regulates long-term appetite and energy expenditure. Researchers then introduced the chronic pain aspect to the study, exposing the mice to heat and touch stimuli and measuring their response. In the nutritionally poor mice, hypersensitivity to these stimuli was more evident and sustained in length than in the control mice.

Sorge said that while clinical data showing that obese individuals take longer to recover from injury already exists, his lab is likely the first to suggest that poor diet is to blame. According to Sorge, a poor quality diet leads to chronic low-level inflammation that may “prime” one’s immune system to overreact, thus making obese individuals with chronic pain slower to recover.

“The clinical implications are that diet has a clear impact on your physiological state and may have a big impact on how well people recover from injury,” Sorge said. “We believe that diet has a major impact on many aspects of health and hope to translate our findings to clinical trials.”

Sorge and his team plan to build on their findings by teaming up with other researchers at UAB and through the Nutrition and Obesity Research Center to study how diet impacts other aspects of health.

GROWING PAINS Pain research is of special relevance in the medical community because an increasing number of Americans are visiting a doctor complaining of pain, making it the number one reason that people see a doctor.

Pictured (L to R): Dr. Robert Sorge, Lab Manager Tammie Sorge, Stacie Totsch (student), Megan Waite (student) and Jenni Weikard (student).

SPRING 2016 // PSYCHOLOGY UPDATE 5

Are Adolescents

Enough

?

from UAB News, By Katherine Shonesy

A

"Generally, less sleep is related to poor outcomes, not the other way around. In this case, this unexpected result could be explained by considering that longer sleep duration does not necessarily reflect higher-quality sleep, but instead may serve as another indicator of sleep problems, at least among urban adolescents.”

6 PSYCHOLOGY UPDATE // SPRING 2016

new study from the University of Alabama at Birmingham indicates that adolescents who experience sleep problems and longer sleep duration are more reactive to stress, which could contribute to academic, behavioral and health issues. Existing studies show that nearly 70 percent of U.S. adolescents do not receive sufficient sleep. It is also known that insufficient sleep and sleep problems contribute to cognitive problems and poor physical health over time, possibly because of disruptions in a key part of the neuroendocrine system that controls reactions to stress and regulates many body processes —the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, or the HPA axis.

The relationship between sleep and the HPA axis has been studied in both children and adults; but little is known about this link during adolescence, which is a key period of time, as both sleep and the HPA axis are undergoing significant developmental changes related to puberty. Sylvie Mrug, a psychology professor in UAB’s College of Arts and Sciences, and her colleagues from UAB and Arizona State University sought to further explore the relationship between sleep and reactivity to stress, specifically as it relates to HPA-axis activity, in adolescents.The researchers examined two dimensions of sleep — sleep duration and sleep problems from the perspectives of adolescents and their parents, as well as cortisol levels before and after social stress. The team also looked at how the results varied based on gender.

“We chose to look at sleep patterns in urban AfricanAmerican adolescents, due to information we understood from earlier research in the field,” Mrug said.

“This particular population is more likely to experience insufficient sleep, and their functioning is more negatively affected by lower sleep quality, so we knew that finding results for this demographic could be especially important.”

84 PARTICIPANTS

Eighty-four adolescents with an average age of approximately 13 took part in the study. During their visit to the research lab, participating adolescents were given the children’s version of a common stress test, called the Trier Social Stress Test, to measure their physiological responses to stress. This test involves speaking and computing mental math problems in front of an audience.

Saliva samples were taken from each participant in order to test cortisol levels before and after the stress test.

Participants then reported on their bed times and wake times and any sleep problems, such as insomnia, daytime sleepiness and general sleep quality, during a regular week. Parents of the adolescents were asked to report on their children’s sleep as well.

The adolescents most commonly reported the following sleep problems: the need for multiple reminders to get up in the morning, not having a good night’s sleep, feeling tired or sleepy during the day, and not being satisfied with their sleep.The researchers looked at the cortisol levels of the adolescent participants. Cortisol release during and after the stressful lab test was higher for adolescents who reported more sleep problems and longer sleep duration, and whose parents reported longer sleep duration.

13 YEARS OF AGE

The effects of sleep problems on greater cortisol release during stress were stronger in females than in males, suggesting that adolescent girls may be more sensitive to disrupted and poor quality sleep.

“Overall, the results of our study confirm what we originally hypothesized — that sleep problems induce greater response to stress in adolescents,” Mrug said.

“It’s important that we know this, because the enhanced and prolonged activation of the HPA axis in response to stress could contribute to more health problems. The urban African-American youth whom we studied may be particularly negatively affected by poor sleep because they are more likely to experience uncontrollable stress related to community and school violence. We want to do all that we can to understand ways we can help ensure better cognitive, emotional and physical health outcomes for these adolescents.”

“The result of higher cortisol levels in adolescents experiencing sleep problems was exactly what we expected to see,” Mrug said. “We were, however, surprised that longer sleep duration predicted a stronger cortisol response, because previous studies linked shorter sleep duration with higher cortisol levels. Generally, less sleep is related to poor outcomes, not the other way around. In this case, this unexpected result could be explained by considering that longer sleep duration does not necessarily reflect higher-quality sleep, but instead may serve as another indicator of sleep problems, at least among urban adolescents.”

SPRING 2016 // PSYCHOLOGY UPDATE 7

SOLVING THE

MYSTERIES of Fibromyalgia could help patients break free from UAB Magazine, by Sarah C.P. Williams, Photos by Steve Wood

Younger’s discoveries about leptin, microglia, and naltrexone have already begun to change the face of fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue research and treatment. But his work is just beginning, he says. “It’s essential that we have a fuller understanding of what’s wrong before we’re able to find the best treatments,” Younger says.

QUICK FACTS

About Fibromyalgia and Related Diseases Affects mainly women, though they can impact men and children.

Symptoms may include pain; fatigue; cognitive/memory problems; sleep disturbances; numbness and tingling; and sensitivity to temperature, noises, and light; among others.

There is no simple, specific test to diagnose these disorders. Physicians often talk with patients about pain and fatigue severity and the presence of other symptoms.

Patients with chronic fatigue syndrome suffer daily, long-term, severe fatigue.

Gulf War Illness includes chronic, medically unexplained symptoms affecting veterans and civilians involved with military duty in the Persian Gulf region.

8 PSYCHOLOGY UPDATE // SPRING 2016

F

or 10 years, Gail De Sciose felt that pain controlled her activities, her schedule, her every move. She often found herself sprawled on the floor of her Birmingham home, sharp pains radiating down her neck, back, and hips. It was an abrupt change from the vibrant life she once led in New York City, where she had worked as a sales manager, traveled around the country, and volunteered at a local animal shelter.

“It felt like a hot poker being dragged across my body,” De Sciose recalls. And the pain was accompanied by debilitating fatigue; De Sciose remembers falling asleep in the middle of conversations. “There were times I just couldn’t function,” she says. “I had to cancel theater tickets, vacations, and lunches with friends.”

De Sciose is one of five million Americans and more than 200,000 Alabamians with fibromyalgia, a disorder characterized by widespread pain that has lasted at least three months and can’t be attributed to any definitive cause. But a fibromyalgia diagnosis doesn’t lead to a cure. For years after she had a name for her hot poker stabs, De Sciose remained in pain, and that’s not unusual: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention highlights studies showing that fibromyalgia patients rate their quality of life lower than patients with other chronic diseases, and are three-and-a-half times more likely to develop depression than those without the disorder.

Those responses could be on the verge of changing, however.

At UAB, Jarred Younger, Ph.D., hopes to establish Alabama’s first research and clinical care center specializing in fibromyalgia and related conditions, including chronic fatigue syndrome and Gulf War Illness. Already, research by Younger and his team in UAB’s new Neuroinflammation, Pain, and Fatigue Lab has revealed possible underlying causes for the disorders and pointed to treatments that are helping to ease pain and fatigue—without side effects—in patients.

Younger’s work “is really cutting-edge; it’s groundbreaking,” says David McLain, M.D., a Birmingham rheumatologist who treats the disease and often collaborates with UAB researchers.

“He’s responsible for opening up a whole new avenue of treatments, and it’s fortunate he came to UAB.”

A BRAINY Solution Younger, an associate professor recruited to the UAB College of Arts and Sciences Department of Psychology in 2014, became interested in fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University’s medical school. He had been studying pain more broadly when he realized how poorly understood these disorders were.

“Patients are wholly affected,” Younger says. “Some used to be athletes, some used to be business owners, and then their lives are taken over.” Often, he points out, patients visit doctor after doctor, only to be told repeatedly that they’re healthy—and that the pain or fatigue is all in their heads.

Younger, along with many other researchers and clinicians, believed otherwise. “I made it my mission to figure out what is wrong with these patients and how to treat them,” he says.

As a Stanford postdoctoral fellow and faculty member, Younger spearheaded studies that surveyed immune molecules in the blood. He honed in on one particular protein called leptin, released by fat tissue, which appears in greater amounts in the blood of chronic fatigue patients. In fact, Younger could even gauge the day-to-day severity of a patient’s symptoms just by tracking his or her leptin levels.

These initial findings spurred him to continue investigating inflammatory immune molecules—and to start looking at the brain’s role in the diseases. Leptin has the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier and affect neural cells, causing pain and fatigue. But exactly how that happens remains a mystery.

Younger thinks it has something to do with microglia, a type of immune cell found in the brain that normally helps to protect neurons.

“Microglia defend our brain against everything,” Younger explains. “When we get the flu, for instance, microglia are activated. These cells make us want to crawl into bed and do nothing—so our body can devote its resources to fighting off the flu.”

In both fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue patients, Younger hypothesizes, the microglia are turned on when they’re not supposed to be, causing fatigue or pain, a depressed mood, and cognitive dysfunction. At UAB, he is planning follow-up studies to help find evidence supporting this idea. He faces a crucial challenge, however: Currently, no methods are available to look directly at the activation or inflammation of microglia in living humans. But Younger and his colleagues are working on solutions, including specialized brain scans that measure the temperature of the brain or the presence of certain chemicals.

“It’s only very recently that people are starting to explore what sensitizes microglia,” Younger says. “The cells can be in a quiet, helpful state, or an active, warlike state.” His findings, he hopes, will help reveal the difference.

To read more, visit http://www.uab.edu/uabmagazine/features/prisoners-of-pain

Dr. Younger with Postdoctoral Fellow Luke Parkitny, Ph.D. (center), and staff, demonstrate a novel technique to assess immune system function and identify new biomarkers for chronic diseases.

SPRING 2016 // PSYCHOLOGY UPDATE 9

Graduate Studies

WELCOME New Students IT’S A MATCH!

MEDICAL/CLINICAL

Left to Right: Haley Bednarz, Heather Dark, Christina Mueller, Sarah Terry, Elizabeth McRae, Christina D'Angelo, Marissa Swanson

LIFESPAN DEVELOPMENTAL

All six students from the Medical/Clinical Psychology Program were matched in 2016.

Hailey Bulls

James A. Haley Veterans Hospital (Tampa, FL) General Internship

Emilee Burgess

Nova Scotia Capital District Mental Health Internship (Dartmouth, NS) General Internship

Michelle Haddad

University of WashingtonPsychiatry(Seattle, WA) Behavioral Medicine/ Neuropsychology

Christina Jagielski

Left to Right: Edwin Burgess, Emma Sartin, Catheryn Orihuela, Melissa Thye

BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE

University of Chicago Medicine (Chicago, IL) Adult/Health Psychology

Caroline Leonczyk

Duke University Medical Center (Durham, NC) Child-Clinical-Autism Focus

Erica Schmidt Memphis VA Medical Center (Memphis, TN) Neuropsychology

4 PSYCHOLOGY UPDATE / Fall 2015

10 PSYCHOLOGY UPDATE // SPRING 2016

Front Row: Lauren Allen, Mandy Biles, Yue Zhang Back Row: Anthoni Goodman, Eric Nelson

Tyler Bell

Lifespan Developmental student Tyler Bell won first prize in the Patient Centered portion of the Comprehensive Center for Healthy Aging Poster Session for his abstract titled “The Association Between Cognitive Decline and Incident Depressive Symptoms in Older Hispanic Adults.” Tyler is mentored by Dr. Michael Crowe.

STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

Haley Johnson Bishop

Psi Chi recently named Haley Bishop a Travel Award recipient to support her travel to the Transportation Research Board. Haley was also selected as 1 of 6 among nearly 100 Dwight D. Eisenhower Transportation Fellows across the U.S. for a podium presentation on her work on autism and driving at the annual TRB meeting in Washington, D.C.

Marissa Swanson

was named the 2015 Lizette Peterson Homer Injury Grant Award Winner for her study entitled “Unintentional Childhood Injury in Rural Uganda.” Through this award, Marissa is given $5,000 to support her M.A. thesis research. Marissa is mentored by Dr. David Schwebel.

Shannon Wittig

was awarded a scholarship from the CIRTL toward an Associate course to be taken in Spring 2016 (GRD 705 Teaching at the College Level and beyond). The Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning is a national consortium of research institutions, funded by the National Science Foundation, whose mission is to develop the next generation of STEM faculty.

The goal of CIRTL is to improve the STEM learning of all students at every college and university, and thereby to increase the diversity in STEM fields and the science literacy of the nation.

LDPP Grad Students Sweep 2016 UAB Graduate Student Research Days

Below: Students are photographed with Graduate Dean Lori McMahon. (L to R) Benjamin McManus (2nd Place Masters Session), Dean McMahon, Haley Johnson (1st Place Masters Session), Tyler Bell (2nd Place Masters Session, & Catherine Orihuela (1st place Doctoral Session - not pictured.)

JOSE O. MAXIMO Improving brain connectivity in children with autism from UAB The Mix, by Matt Windsor

In a first-of-its-kind study published this summer, researchers at UAB used fMRI imaging to demonstrate that an intensive reading intervention increased connectivity in the brains of children ages 8 to 13 with autism spectrum disorder. The findings reflect the plasticity of the brain and importance of intervention, even at later ages, says senior author Rajesh Kana, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology in the UAB College of Arts and Sciences.

At the Research Exchange, Maximo, a doctoral student in Kana’s lab, presented findings from task-based fMRI imaging in the 13-person study. After a 10-week intervention, the experimental group showed a marked increase in activation in regions of the brain associated with language processing, compared to the control group. “The field is just beginning to examine how behavioral interventions can have an effect on brain functioning in people with ASD,” said Maximo.

“Previous studies have examined only behavioral changes but never looked at whether there were any brain changes as well. Our findings reveal that there were changes in both brain activation and functional synchronization among key regions in language processing, and these changes were correlated with changes in their reading comprehension skills, suggesting that the brain is very plastic in ASD.” Next step: The research team next plans to investigate “ a behavioral intervention that targets another critical characteristic feature of autism — difficulty in social interaction. “Although the language intervention study showed a strong effect on brain plasticity,” Maximo said, “we still don’t know whether these changes in language comprehension skills and brain functioning can also transfer to other domains, such as social skills.”

SPRING 2016 // PSYCHOLOGY UPDATE 11

UAB

PSYCHOLOGY RANKED No.1 UP-ANDCOMING PY PROGRAM

IN THE

SOUTH “The Department of Psychology at UAB works to involve its students in service projects and research that allow them to work regularly within the community.”

REPORT CARD For students who want a challenge, an Honors Program is available to supplement and expand their experience. Collaboration is encouraged both with other departments and larger programs including Children’s Hospital and Civitan Internal Research. UAB is among the largest research institutions in the Southeast, giving students plenty of opportunities to apply their classroom studies to real-world problems. More than 30 percent of students participate in independent research under faculty supervision.

12 PSYCHOLOGY UPDATE // SPRING 2016

UAB

Points: 8 Enrollment: 11,679 Net Price: $13,982

HOW WE MEASURE UP from BestPsychologyDegrees.com, By BPD Staff

There are many psychology programs in the South that consistently rank among the top in the country. However, there are more than a few up and comers that, although they’ve not received the recognition they deserve just yet, are rising in the ranks because of a commitment to growth and sustained excellence. These schools are making strides in undergraduate research, adding state-of-the-art facilities, and offering an ever-growing number of opportunities for students both in and out of the classroom. Although you may be seeing them here for the first time, you will likely be hearing more about these programs in the near future as they are indeed ones to watch.

Rating and Ranking Methodology Presence of Master’s Degree Program – 1 point Presence of Doctoral Degree Program – 1 point Innovative Instructional Methods (e.g., experiential learning) – 1 point Use of Cutting-Edge Technological Resources – 1 point Recent Facility Additions/Renovations – 1 point Psychology Research Opportunities – 1 point Study Abroad Opportunities in Psychology – 1 point Psychology Internship Opportunities – 1 point Affiliated Centers and Institutes on Campus – 1 point Related Student Organizations and Societies – 1 point Psychology Colloquium or Lecture/Speaking Series – 1 point

#1

Univ. of Alabama at Birmingham

#2

Auburn

#3

Univ. of Houston

#4

Univ. of Central Florida

#5

Georgia State

#6

Clemson

#7

North Carolina State Univ.

#8

Agnes Scott College (Georgia)

#9

Tulane

#10

Hendrix College (Arkansas) SPRING 2016 // PSYCHOLOGY UPDATE 13

Staying Connected to UAB Psychology

Donate to Psychology by visiting www.uab.edu/give/now and write -in Psychology

This award honors young alumni who have made significant professional accomplishments at an early stage in their careers.

Lieutenant Commander

UAB College of Arts and Sciences Dean Robert Palazzo, Ph.D. (center), with the recipients of the College's 2016 Alumni Awards, from left to right: Joy O'Neal, LCDR Joanna Gaines, Ph.D., Jessica Randazza, and Trevor Hale

JOANNA GAINES

Receives CAS 2016 Trailblazing Alumni Award from CAS News

Lieutenant Commander Joanna Gaines, M.A. in Psychology, 2008; Ph.D., in Psychology, 2010 Joanna is a United States Public Health Service Officer (USPHS) in the Department of Health and Human Services at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She has also served in the Indian Health Service. She commissioned with the USPHS as part of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, the CDC’s post-doctoral training program, only the second developmental psychologist to do so. She has been deployed all over the nation and world during epidemics, immigration crises and natural disasters, including Liberia, Haiti, Kenya, Arizona and Missouri.

She has been awarded the Scientist Responder of the Year as a lieutenant, the most junior officer to receive the recognition. She is one of only two non-clinical psychologists within the USPHS Commissioned Corps and was the only research psychologist assigned to the Indian Health Service in 2012-2013. Of more than 280 USPHS officers, Joanna was the only female officer to serve on a morgue team for Ebola, using her skills as an anthropologist and psychologist to ensure victims’ remains were handled safely and in a manner respectful of their culture and families.

14 PSYCHOLOGY UPDATE // SPRING 2016

UPCOMING EVENTS March

Summer

Summer Academic Calendar June 24 Last Day to Withdraw Aug 6 - 12 Final Exams Aug 13 Commencement

30

CME Series

3/30 @ 3:30 PM Campbell Hall 327 Magdalena Szaflarski, Ph.D. “Spirituality, Religion, & HIV: Individual, Social Structural, and Community Outreach”

April

27

CME Series

4/27 @ 3:30 PM Campbell Hall 327 Timothy Levine, Ph.D. “Improving Accuracy in Deception Detection”

SAVE THE DATE

October 14 & 15

Academic Calendar

Apr 1 Last Day to Withdraw Apr 4 - 8 Assigned Time Registration Apr 11 - May 8 Open Registration Apr 22 Last Day of Class Apr 23 - 24 Undergraduate Reading Days Apr 25 - 29 Final Examinations Apr 30 Commencement

Join us for a Two-Day Conference at the new UAB Hill Student Center October 14 & 15 in Birmingham, AL to discuss the newest research directions in pain research and treatment.

May KARLENE BALL, Ph.D.

All pain researchers, clinicians, and students are welcome. This is a joint conference being supported by the UAB School of CME Serieseditor executive Medicine and the UAB College of Arts and 5/18 @ 3:30 PM Sciences. This is a CME approved Campbell Hall 327 conference program for physicians and Hailey Bulls, Ph.D. MARY FRANCES THETFORD, M.Ed. “TBD” psychologists. More details to follow. editor + content

18

06

The Ost

4/06 @ 3:00 PM Green and Gold Room

Academic Calendar May 2LAUREN Grades DueVARDAMAN (by midnight) May 4 Grades Available Online content May 9 Classes Begin+ design May 16 Last Day to Drop/Add (Without paying fulland Tuition & Fees) *contributing articles content from UAB News, CAS Magazine & Department Psychology and staff May 20 Last of Day to Submitfaculty Graduate School Application for Degree/ Certificate

SPRING 2016 // PSYCHOLOGY UPDATE 15

UAB Department of Psychology Campbell Hall Suite 415 | 1300 University Blvd | Birmingham, AL 35294 205.934.3850