Dean Feldman on Mentoring
Earlier this year the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences was recipient of a Mellon Mutual Mentoring Grant. This campus-wide faculty development initiative, funded by a three-year, $400,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, seeks to address through mentoring the numerous challenges that new and under-represented faculty face. Professor of Psychology Robert Feldman, associate dean and strong proponent of faculty and student development, was principal investigator of the SBS Mellon Mutual Mentoring Team Grant. Read an interview with him on the Office of Faculty Development website.

SBS Alumni Survey Sent
On May 28, the Dean's Office began its first survey of SBS alumni. The survey seeks ideas on higher education in general and alumni experiences at UMass Amherst in particular. Capitalizing on their unique insights as former students at UMass Amherst, the College will use survey results to make improvements for current students. Results will be posted on this website and included in an upcoming newsletter. We'll be asking alumni to vote on their favorite ideas. If you haven't received an invitation to the survey and would like to complete it, click here.

Open house at MRI Facility Shared by Hospital, Campus Researchers
Cooley Dickinson Hospital’s magnetic resonance imaging facility at 170 University Drive, which is being shared by campus researchers, is hosting an open house on Wednesday, June 4 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Area residents can take a behind-the-scenes tour of the facility, equipped with the Siemens High-Field Open MRI, view demonstrations of imaging technology and learn how faculty from the Psychology and Kinesiology departments will use the MRI equipment to aid their research. Read more...

Commencement Images from the SBS Tent
Congratulations to all of this year's SBS students who earned their degrees. Following are informal images captured after the ceremony when graduates, their families and friends came to the SBS tent for a reception and a gift sportpack from the College. View the images...

Sociologist's Article Featured in ASA Journal
"Ethnic and Gender Satisfaction in the Military: The Effect of a Meritocratic Institution" by Jennifer Lundquist (sociology) is the feature journal article for June on the ASA webpage. This article reevaluates traditional racial and gender disparities in the work satisfaction literature by examining the U.S. military, an institution that has ameliorated many racial inequalities while exacerbating gender conflict. The military departs from civilian society in some analytically useful ways, making it a unique, though underutilized, setting for examining inequality. Read the article... [pdf]

Tropp Wins Early Career Award from ISPP
Linda Tropp (psychology), director of the Psychology of Peace and Violence Concentration, has received the 2008 Erik Erikson Early Career Award from the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP). Named for the "Father of Psychosocial Development,” the award recognizes and celebrates exceptional achievement and goes to an individual who is a member of ISPP and within a decade of receiving the Ph.D. First awarded in 1982, the list of recipients of the Erikson Award is a compendium of those who are among the most prominent leaders in political psychology today. Read more...