News

Congratulations to Sophia Tran, Alyssa Smith, and Megan Kelly, who recently received awards for their presentations at CPA and CSBBCS!

Sophia Tran won the Peter Graf Award for Excellence in Brain and Cognitive Science Research for her talk entitled “Drawing Compared to Writing in a Diary Enhances Recall of Autobiographical Memories” at CPA in Calgary this June.

As a part of O’Neill’s seminar in a developmental psychology course, students worked on proposals for three different parks in the region that would allow students of all socio-economic statuses to take part in “playful learning” — using play to build skills.

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University of Waterloo Psychology ranked 5th in Canada and is in the top 100 Psychology Departments in the world, according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)! This is once again a huge achievement and a wonderful testament to our world-class faculty and students... Have a scroll through here.

New research reveals that devotion to selfless values can help people feel more confident and less hostile in stressful circumstances.

“Selfless values can be like life vests that buoy a kind of higher power and resilience, freeing us from worry and defensiveness,” said Ian McGregor, professor of personality and social psychology at the University of Waterloo and the study’s lead author. “Focusing on a greater good beyond themselves had the paradoxical effect of making participants’ psychologically stronger and more reasonable.”

Beck and his graduate student, Arden Flow, collected data from a sample of 94 full-time working adults who either had or had not contracted COVID-19 at least one month prior to the study. Their study shows individuals who had contracted COVID-19 reported significantly more cognitive failures at work. “Relative to the group who had never had COVID-19, the group who had contracted COVID-19 reported more cognitive failures at work, which are defined as problems with memory, attention, and action,” Beck said.

This year, three members of the Department of Psychology have been recognized in ALL THREE of the UW Arts Awards categories:

Katherine White is the recipient of the 2022 Arts Award for Excellence in Research. This award recognizes the quantity and quality of Katherine’s research contributions and the disciplinary/interdisciplinary impact of her work.

“Our study confirms that Canada’s menthol cigarette ban led to substantial public health benefits,” said Geoffrey T. Fong, professor of psychology and public health sciences at the University of Waterloo and lead author of the study. “Smoking is the number one preventable cause of death and disease in Canada, the United States, and globally. ” Fong is also senior investigator at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research and principal investigator of the ITC Project.

A substantial number of Canadian smokers, vapers, and recent ex-smokers support innovative policies that could help drive further declines in overall smoking rates, according to a new report from UW Psych Professor, Dr. Geoffrey Fong and the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Project at the University of Waterloo.

Click here to access the full report

Congrats to UW Psychology Grad student McLennon Wilson for receiving the 2021 Warren Ober Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Grad Student within the Faculty of Arts at UW. McLennon- this is a true testament to the outstanding quality of your teaching, talent and dedication. Excellent work.

Congratulations to Dr. Marjory Phillips on being named this year’s recipient of the Canadian Council of Professional Psychology Programs (CCPPP) Award for Excellence in Professional Training in the Academic Training category. This is a national award that recognizes a psychologist for his/her outstanding contributions to the professional training of graduate students/interns. This is among the highest awards for the Clinical Psychology profession in Canada.