Faculty Profiles
Eminent Psychologist Is Top Advisor Among Students
Professor of Psychology Susan Krauss Whitbourne has received many awards during her career as teacher, researcher, honors coordinator, and director of the Office of National Scholarship Advisement (ONSA) at UMass Amherst—so many in fact that last year the American Psychological Association (APA) recognized her for “outstanding and unusual contributions” to the field at the Eminent Women in Psychology Symposium during the organization’s annual conference. But when the most recent honor, the Outstanding Academic Advising Award, came her way this spring, Whitbourne was particularly pleased. “I place a great deal of value on advising, for both my current and my past students. Good advice can help them enhance career opportunities throughout their lives and help them achieve their potential.”
In addition to working with her own advisees and graduate students, Whitbourne spends three afternoons a week in the ONSA office helping students apply for prestigious national scholarships, such as the Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright, Goldwater, and Truman. Her work in ONSA includes providing information and advice about application information, recommendations, study or research proposals, essays, personal statements and resumes, and so on. “And if they are selected as finalists,” she says, “I arrange rigorous mock interviews for them. It all takes a lot of planning and coordination but it’s worth it. Several students won major national scholarships this year. Although we don’t just focus on winning, it’s great when students are recognized for their talents and achievements.”
Planning, though, seems to come naturally for Whitbourne. Take a look at a “normal” day. “Class preparation, especially for large lectures, is pretty intense,” she says. “I review my notes and slides, making them as up-to-date as possible, and add new videos or other material. I refresh my memory on topics that require additional explanations and run through the timing. Then I load up my iPod to play before and after every class—the music wakes up the class and gets me in the right frame of mind as well. After class, I usually work with my advisees in the psych department. Many of my undergraduate students ask for letters of recommendation, either for jobs or grad school. And I maintain relationships with my former students, which often means writing more letters or helping them with applications for several years after they graduate. It’s great that they still value my opinion.”
Whitbourne also is faculty advisor to two honor societies (Psi Chi and Alpha Lambda Delta) and treasurer for Phi Beta Kappa, so often her day includes meeting with the officers and helping them plan events. This spring, she’s working with Psi Chi on an undergraduate research conference that will feature the APA’s president-elect. “Throughout the day,” she notes, “I keep up with emails from colleagues around the country, as I am very involved with committee work for the APA.” Next year, she will chair the Policy and Planning Board. To top things off, Whitbourne maintains an active research program on adult development, aging, geropsychology, and clinical psychology. Author or co-author of 15 books, 110 journal articles and chapters, and more than 180 conference presentations, she has been on the editorial boards or a consulting editor for several professional journals. Currently at work on publications based on her 34-year study of adult personality development from college to the midlife years, Whitbourne is editor of a book, to be released this spring, on the aging of baby boomers, a topic of increasing importance.
Somehow Whitbourne manages to have a personal life too: wife, mother of two young adults (both UMass Amherst psychology alumni), aerobics, knitting, cooking, and community service. “I have a pretty strong work ethic and enthusiasm for what I do. I usually have my fingers in various pies, and over the years I have accumulated a number of pies!”
Whitbourne left a tenured position at the University of Rochester to come to UMass Amherst in 1984 when her husband Richard O’Brien was selected provost. “A career move for my husband became a terrific opportunity for me as well,” she explains. “The chance to be in a large and productive psychology department was attractive, and through a post-doctoral program in clinical psychology I could expand my interests in aging to include adult psychopathology.” All in all, Whitbourne says, it was a wise move. “I feel strongly about public higher education, being an alum of the University of Buffalo. The diversity of students and viewpoints is great. It’s been particularly rewarding to work with the ONSA students, meeting so many interesting people with majors ranging from languages to the hard sciences.”
When asked what she says to prospective students about coming to campus, Whitbourne tells them to do the “catalog match test.” ”If they pick up any major textbook in their area of interest, look at the index of authors, and then compare the names to those in UMass Amherst catalog, they’ll see that the experts are here,” she says. “And the students are terrific too—among the best in Massachusetts and beyond.”
April 24, 2006
