2024 Distinguished Alumni Award: Gale Sinatra
Gale Sinatra BS ’81 MS ’87 PhD ’89 is the recipient of the 2024 College of Natural Sciences (CNS) Distinguished Alumni Award.
Sinatra currently serves as Distinguished Professor of Education and Psychology, Stephen H. Crocker Chair, and Associate Dean for Research in the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. Her research explores the cognitive and motivational factors that drive effective learning in science. In particular, she examines how motivation and emotion influence the teaching and understanding of contentious subjects such as biological evolution and climate change. This is reflected in the 2021 book she co-authored, Science Denial: Why It Happens and What to Do About It.
“I am so honored to receive this award,” expressed Sinatra. “There is barely a week that goes by where I don’t draw on what I learned from the fabulous professors in the psychology program I studied with during my years earning three degrees (BS, MS, and PhD) from UMass. A special thanks goes to my mentor, Dr. James M. Royer, for making my career possible.”
You read that correctly: Sinatra earned her BS in Psychology (’81), MS in Psychology (’87), and Doctorate in Psychology (’89), all from UMass Amherst.
Marcy Driscoll MS ’76 PhD ’78, Dean Emerita and Leslie J. Briggs Professor of Educational Research at Florida State University, as well as the individual who nominated Sinatra for this award, describes the impact that her work is having on scientific learning: “Gale is my academic younger sister, which is to say that we studied under the same doctoral advisor at UMass [Dr. Royer]. Dr. Royer was an amazing mentor, with whom we both have had a lifelong friendship, and I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Gale develop into a superb scholar and international leader. The results of her work have meaningful and practical implications for countering science disinformation and combatting science denial, as well as for how to better equip individuals to make sense of complex scientific topics.”
Michael A. Fox, PhD, Dean of the College of Natural Sciences, speaks to the impact Sinatra’s success has had on society and on CNS: “Dr. Sinatra’s contributions to science not only include exceptional scholarship, but also dedicated academic leadership and strong stewardship of science to the public. It is impressive that, in addition to the fundamental contributions she has made to our understanding of the cognitive processes that underlie successful learning of science, she has taken up the challenge of examining concepts related to the teaching and learning of controversial topics, such as climate change, evolution, and science denialism. This is difficult work, but the results have a profound and lasting impact on society. We are excited to name Dr. Sinatra the recipient of our inaugural Distinguished Alumni Award and are so proud that UMass Amherst was where her impactful career and legacy began.”
With an expertise that spans from the science of learning to the learning of science, Sinatra has been: elected member of the National Academy of Education (2022); ranked in the Top 20 of the Women Educational Psychologists Publishing Productivity Study by Greenbaum et al. (2018); and chosen as the President of the American Psychological Association’s Educational Psychology division (2017), among many other distinctions.