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Professor Made Presentations at Summer Conferences

Posted on Monday, September 8, 2008

Dr. Sandra Webster, Westminster College professor of psychology, made several presentations during the summer.

In June, she was one of 23 elected council representatives for the Psychology Division of the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) at its National Research Conference at the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota. CUR is dedicated to helping faculty work effectively with undergraduate students in research in all academic disciplines.

Webster led two workshops at the conference. The first was "Getting Started Early with APA Writing Style" with Lenore Szuchman of Barry University, author of Writing with Style. Webster is the author of Hand-in-Hand: Research Design and Statistics in the Social Sciences, a textbook that integrates a chapter on APA writing style. Webster cited results from "One Change to One Course," in which she promised to bake a pie if all students in one class or lab section correctly used APA format for references and citation in their project proposals and/or final research report.

"I started the 'Pie Challenge' about 10 years ago," Webster explained. "The students have been learning APA style well, but this year they did even better: there were fewer total errors than there were students."

The second workshop was "Finding the Fit of Undergraduate Research in Early Career Faculty Development" with Dr. Peter Smith, Westminster associate professor chemistry, and Susan Larson and Paul Seifert of Concordia College.

"One point raised during the discussions is that it's important to integrate undergraduate research with teaching," Webster said. "Projects that fit the goals of courses we teach can allow for one integrated approach that will be easier to accomplish than having two separate teaching and undergraduate research agendas."

Webster attended the Improving University Teaching Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, July 28-Aug. 1, where she was part of an expert panel presentation, "Making Meaning: The Fulbright Experience and Transformational Learning." 

Webster was a Fulbright lecturer at the University of Jos, Nigeria (1989-1990), and at Korea University and Sungshin Women's University in Seoul, Korea (2000-2001). 

"The varying experiences and countries (Croatia, Tunisia, Nepal, Nigeria, South Korea, and Austria) that we represented led to a lively interactive discussion following our formal presentations," Webster said. "Conclusions drawn for potential Fulbrighters: expect the unexpected; find a match between your skills and the host intuition's needs; develop your language skills; and look off the beaten path for more interesting and less popular places." 

Webster made two presentations at the American Psychological Association meeting in Boston Aug. 14-17, and was one of over 75 psychology Fulbrighters honored. 

Her Fulbright poster, "Culturally Sensitive Research and Teaching in Nigeria and Korea," was invited for the special sessions honoring international psychology outreach through the Fulbright Program. 

Her second poster, "Experimentally Inducing Dominance and Pleasure through Agency and Essay Valance," was about her current emotion research program. 

Webster, who has been with Westminster since 1983, earned her undergraduate and master's degrees and Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

Contact Webster at (724) 946-7359 or e-mail websters@westminster.edu for more information.

Dr. Sandra Webster