Monthly Archives: February 2011

February 15, 2011; Volume 5, Issue 5

Posted on by

Valentine’s Day may have passed, but we here at The Pink Flamingo believe in Valentine’s week. After all, why should relationships only be celebrated on one measly day? Besides, there’s lots of love in the air these days–for the victorious Green Bay Packers, for the (at least brief) return of above-freezing temperatures, for upcoming midterms…

Okay, so maybe we’re pushing it with that last one. However, what’s not to love about a relationship-themed issue of your favorite departmental newsletter? You’ll find all the news and a great Top Ten list below!

P/HD Club: A Message from the President, Kaitlyn Florer

Psi Chi: A Message from the President, Amanda Luedtke

Career Tip of the Month: Attend the Spring Job & Internship Fair

Careers of the Month: February 2011 Edition

Summer Classes and Summer Registration: Plan Ahead, Get Ahead, and Register NOW!

Grad School Tip of the Month: Investigate the “New GRE”

Good Student News

Did You Know…?

Human Development Abroad: A Travel Course to South Africa

Holiday-Themed Top Ten

P/HD Club: A Message from the President, Kaitlyn Florer

Posted on by

Hello P/HD Club Members, and welcome back! We have some exciting events coming up this semester, and we hope to see you there! Our first few events of the semester are:

Club Meeting: February 17 at 6:30 p.m. in TH 312. We’ll be discussing other events coming up this semester, as well as which officer positions will be opening up for the 2011-2012 school year.

Presentation by Dr. Bartell on Relationships: March 3 at 6 p.m. in ES 114.

Club Meeting: March 7 at 5:30 p.m. in MAC 111. We’ll be electing officers for next year.

Psi Chi: A Message from the President, Amanda Luedtke

Posted on by

Hi everyone,

I hope you had a great winter break! First, I would like to congratulate the newly-elected officers for the next academic year, and to thank everyone who ran for a position:

President: Kaitlyn Florer

Vice President: Erin Ehlers

Secretary: Emma Bretl

Treasurer: Molly Swenty

Public Relations Chair: Amber Kasten

Next, although the exact time and date are still TBA, please note that Psi Chi will have its first meeting of the semester during the week of February 21. If anyone has any questions, please feel free to contact the President of Psi Chi, Amanda Luedtke.

Career Tip of the Month: Attend the Spring Job and Internship Fair

Posted on by

Attention freshmen through seniors:

It’s never too early or too late to take advantage of this great opportunity! Our good friends at Career Services will be hosting the Spring Job and Internship Fair on February 23, from 9:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m. in the Phoenix Rooms. All students are welcome and could potentially benefit from attending. You can learn more (Who should attend, and why? Which employers will be there? What should you wear? What should you bring?) on Career Services’ helpful website. If you’re not sure you have a resume ready to share with potential internships or employers, you can also learn more about resumes here. You can even visit during convenient drop-in hours or make a specific appointment to have your resume reviewed by a Career Services professional. Learn more by checking out this webpage.

Careers of the Month: February 2011 Edition

Posted on by

In honor of Valentine’s Day, we feature two “relationship-oriented” career options this month. Enjoy!

Customer Service Representative
What could be more precious than the relationship between a business and its customers? If you are interested in a bachelor’s degree-level career that will allow you to employ wonderful communication and conflict resolution skills and interface regularly with the public, learn more by clicking here.

Health Educator
To work as a health educator with a bachelor’s degree, you would likely need to have that degree in health education. If you are considering a different kind of graduate program after completing your Human Development or Psychology degree, however, consider health education or public health. Here’s another career that will allow you to build great helping relationships with those in need of your services. Read all about it at this link.

Summer Classes and Summer Registration: Plan Ahead, Get Ahead, and Register NOW!

Posted on by

This message comes to you from Dr. Wilson-Doenges, who reminds everyone that the time to think about summer is now! Not just the weather – but summer classes, too! Here is the list of courses Human Development and Psychology are offering online, hybrid, and in-person this summer. Note that two of the Psychology classes (Psychology of Emotion and Organizational and Personnel Psychology) will not be taught this fall, so summer is your last chance to take these courses in 2011. Registration for summer is now open, and classes are filling up!

IN-PERSON AND HYBRID COURSES:

HUM DEV 353: Family Development (4W2, afternoons, Dr. Denise Bartell)

PSYCH 438: Counseling Across the Lifespan (4W1, mornings, Dr. Kristin Vespia)

PSYCH 415: Organizational and Personnel Psychology (4W1, HYBRID, afternoons, Dr. David Radosevich)

ONLINE COURSES:

COMM SCI 205: Social Science Statistics (6W1, Dr. Georjeanna Wilson-Doenges)

HUM DEV 210: Introduction to Human Development (6W1, Dr. Dean VonDras)

HUM DEV 331: Infancy and Early Childhood (4W1, Dr. Melissa Schnurr)

HUM DEV 332: Middle Childhood and Adolescence (4W1, Dr. Lloyd Noppe)

PSYCH 401: Psychology of Women (4W2, Dr. Christine Smith)

PSYCH 417: Psychology of Cognitive Processes  (6W1, Dr. Jennifer Zapf)

PSYCH 424: Psychology of Emotion (6W1, Dr. Ryan Martin)

PSYCH 435: Abnormal Psychology (4W1, Dr. Ryan Martin)

Please note that all of the classes listed above are offered through our department and are open to students who meet the basic pre-requisites. Other PSYCH and HUM DEV classes listed on the summer schedule (i.e., those with section numbers that begin with a “1”) are offered through the Adult Degree program and are restricted to their students (at least initially). If you wish to enroll in those, you will have to request special permission from the instructor and from the Adult Degree program.

Grad School Tip of the Month: Investigate the New (Yes, New) GRE

Posted on by

As a belated Valentine, or possibly an early President’s Day gift, the good people at Educational Testing Services are bringing you something new this year: a revised version of the GRE General Test. They will begin giving the new test on August 1, 2011, and they will be offering half-price registration for those who take the test in August and September.

This development means that most of you applying to graduate school next year will face this new test, not the old version. You can learn more about the planned changes on the GRE website, but please remember that it will be important not to use old preparation books (e.g., don’t use your roommate’s book from last year). Please also know that it is important to do some preparation for this test. It is not something you want to approach without any familiarity with the exam, its format, and the computerized testing environment. Many students also find devoting substantial study time to be helpful. Drs. Martin and Vespia have traditionally conducted a brief GRE information session in late April or early May, and they hope to do so again this year. Please watch your email and future issues of the PF for details on the date(s), time(s), and location.

Good Student News

Posted on by

You’re basking in the excitement of the Packers’ Super Bowl win. Why not receive some reflected glory from some of your peers, as well? Psi Chi member Matthew Micolichek was the successful applicant for the second annual Yale University clinical psychology internship. He gets to work at Yale with Dr. Chris Cutter for three months of the summer. Travel, room, and board is paid by Yale and Psi Chi. He follows in the footsteps of Caitlin Gurlt, who worked at Yale last summer.

Tonya Filz, Stephanie Freis, Krystal Vanhoff, Amy Weise, and alum Tiffany Wilhelm all each got posters accepted for presentation at the 2011 APA symposium to be held this August in Washington, D.C. The team will collectively be presenting six posters: four at the Society for Teaching sessions (Div. 2), and two at the Social/Personality sessions (Div. 8). Work presented represents Honors projects, independent studies, and research from Dr. Gurung’s research lab.

Did You Know…?

Posted on by

In our latest installment of this wildly popular feature, we’ll help you become a competitive applicant for jobs and/or grad schools. Did you know…that employers and grad schools are interested in your volunteer experiences (e.g., Golden House, Sexual Assault Center, etc.), even if you didn’t get paid or receive internship credit? Not only are you serving the community, but you’re also building your resume and helping to decide on future career paths. 

Human Development Abroad: A Travel Course to South Africa

Posted on by

On a cold evening on January 5, six gutsy Human Development and Psychology majors met Professor Illene Noppe at Austin Straubel Airport for the beginning of what turned out to be an amazing adventure in South Africa.

Twenty-two hours and four plane changes later, we arrived in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, to study human development in a country 9,000 miles away from Green Bay. Port Elizabeth is on the eastern coast (cape) of South Africa,  alongside the beautiful Indian Ocean. It is home to Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, where we were treated to guest lectures from members of the History, Psychology, Nursing, and Social Work departments. We explored the entire life cycle, from pregnancy until death, in a society that had institutionalized racism (“Apartheid”) until 1994. We also toured many settings associated with our lectures, including a public hospital obstetrics ward for complicated pregnancies, orphanages, shelters for boys and teens, retirement homes, and cemeteries (to make Dr. Noppe happy). We saw a baby being born, line-danced with teens, interviewed middle-class adolescents, visited with elderly residents, and saw untold beauty and unbelievable poverty and the grief associated with a rampant HIV/AIDS crisis.

It was quite an intense learning experience, interspersed with many fun activities, such as participating in game drives, sunning ourselves at gorgeous beaches (it was South Africa’s summer), shopping at flea markets, ziplining, and eating great food. Most importantly, we met many, many gracious and giving people that were a source of inspiration to us all.

Please watch for our presentation of our experiences, to be held at a future Psi Chi event. Dr. Noppe hopes to run the travel course again in the future.

Thanks to Professor Noppe for filling us in on what sounds like an amazing trip! Here are a couple of pictures from the trip, including one that we at The Pink Flamingo find particularly relevant:

    

Holiday-Themed Top Ten

Posted on by

We are all about connecting learning to life at UW-Green Bay, so we want to help you make the most of the holiday. We may be just a little late for this year, but if things didn’t go quite as you had planned this February 14th, start planning now for next year. Here are the Top Ten Ways that Behaviorism Can Improve Your Valentine’s Day.

10. That heart-shaped boxes of chocolates will have greater value if you deprive your partner of food for awhile first. 

9. Because they are not observable behaviors, love and happiness are unimportant. Explain to your partner that this is why he or she did not get a gift this year.

8. Token economies have shown great success in all sorts of settings, and there’s no reason they shouldn’t work in relationships. Don’t just give chocolates. Give tokens for positive behaviors that can be traded for chocolates. 

7. If you go out to dinner, try ordering “fixed interval scallops” as a joke. Your partner will be enamored by the clever behaviorism pun.  

6. To increase the speed of your partner’s lip-puckering, try ringing a bell each time you give him or her a kiss.

5.  Not only is saying “I love you” a bit of a cliché, it’s also meaningless in terms of behaviorism. Try saying something like, “Spending time with you has led to a sharp increase in smiling and laughing, as well as a significant decrease in frowning and crying.” Some sort of visual aid (a chart or graph depicting the change) might help drive the point home.  

4. Remember, punishment is the least effective way to change behavior. Try negative reinforcement instead. Make an aversive noise until your partner does what you want him or her to do.

3. Cards, chocolates, and flowers have little value as reinforcement. If you give a gift, make it cash.   

2. Since variable-ratio reinforcement schedules are best, flip a coin to determine if you will give your partner a gift this year. This should increase positive relationship behaviors in him or her.

1. If you actually tried any of these yourself this year, make sure to check out next month’s Top Ten Ways to get a New Partner Now that You’ve Screwed Up Valentine’s Day.