Letter from the Chair
Dear friends,
Greetings from the UW Department of Psychology! We are delighted to welcome our students back to campus for in-person learning and research, including welcoming them into the recently opened Kincaid Hall.
This fall was particularly special as we established two new gifts. With support from the Linehan family and a network of supporters, we established the Marsha M. Linehan Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Clinic, where the inaugural clinic director Dr. Vibh Forsythe Cox will provide our clinical graduate students with world-class training in DBT, a therapeutic approach developed by Emeritus Professor Marsha Linehan that uniquely benefits people with complex mental illness. Likewise, the gift expands access to DBT with the Life Worth Living Fund, which subsidizes treatment costs so that income is not a barrier to obtaining the treatment one needs to live a healthy and fulfilling life. The gift also establishes graduate student fellowships to support our clinical trainees, so they can devote their attention to learning DBT and working intensely with clients.
Additionally, we received a generous estate gift from Professor James Steele, a graduate student alumnus from our clinical psychology program. This transformational gift will support scholarships for both undergraduate and graduate students interested in the field of clinical psychology. This new gift will allow us to deeply invest in our students and increase access and opportunities for students to engage in research with our faculty.
This year was notable in that we have recruited a world-class cohort of new tenure-track faculty, whose research address topics including neuroscience and genetics, cross-cultural perspectives on adolescent development, and the psychology of inequity. Gifts from our community were critical in supporting the recruitment of this talented group of scholars. In this newsletter, you’ll learn about several faculty members who joined us this year.
In this new year, please consider making a gift to the Friends of Psychology fund so we can continue to advance our educational and scientific mission, and make advances that benefit our local, national, and global communities. We would be grateful for your gift, and proud to partner with you in advancing the important work – and powerful impact – of UW Psychology.
Please enjoy this edition of our newsletter to catch up with the many exciting developments happening in Psychology. If you would like to discuss how you can play a role in supporting our department, my door is always open.
Warm regards,
Cheryl Kaiser
Department of Psychology Chair
PS. We are delighted to annouce the return of the Allen L. Edwards Psychology Lecture Series, our annual, free public evening lecture series. Our 2022 lecture dates will feature talks on neuroscience on April 27th, 2022 and human sexuality on May 4th, 2022. We will be sending more information about the lecture series, including information about our speakers, in the coming weeks. We hope to see you there!