The UIC Cognitive Program will be well represented at Psychonomics in Boston this Fall with these presentations:

Early Language Learners Show A Reversed MLE During Letter Detection.
Joanna C. Bovee & Gary E. Raney

Reduced Comprehension of Explanatory Texts due to Emotional
Prior Beliefs and their Incoherent Conceptual Frameworks
Thomas Griffin & Carlos Salas

Retrieval Practice Aids Performance on New Memory Tests, but Not Inference Tests.
Scott Hinze, James Pellegrino & Jennifer Wiley

Fixation, Incubation and the Perception of Aha! during Problem Solving.
Andrew Jarosz & Jennifer Wiley

Does Concept Mapping Improve Metacomprehension Accuracy?
Joshua S. Redford, Keith W. Thiede,  Jennifer Wiley, & Thomas D. Griffin

On the transfer of prior tests or study events to subsequent study.
Ben Storm, Mike Friedman, & Robert Bjork

Congratulations to Frances Daniel who successfully defended her dissertation, Evaluating Inference Production and Retention through Eye Movements and is now a Visiting Assistant Professor at Elmhurst College.

Congratulations to Greg Colflesh who defended his dissertation on What happens to attention when we drink?  An exploration of how working memory capacity, expertise and alcohol influence attention. Greg is now a postdoc in the Cognition in Adulthood and Late Life Lab at GATech.

Welcome to our new class of incoming students! We have 9 incoming graduate students for 2009-10: Katherine Brill (who will continue to work with Kara Morgan-Short), Kevin Dietz (who worked with Susan Levine and Janellen Huttenlocher at U of Chicago), Tara Jobe (who will continue to work with Ben Storm), Allison Jaeger (who will continue to work with Jenny Wiley), Rebecca Koppel (who worked with Christopher Ball at William and Mary), Brendan McCarthy (who worked with Sandra Virtue at DePaul), Katie McCarthy (who worked with Daniel Corts at Augustana College), Carlos Salas (who worked with William Kelemen at CSU-Long Beach), and Chris Schilling (who worked with Nora Newcombe and Tom Shipley at Temple). 

Congratulations to Dave Cosejo who presented a poster on Re-categorization: Restructuring in categorization at the 2009 Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society in Amsterdam later this summer.

Congratulations to Tara Jobe and Carlos Salas presented at the 2009 Meeting of the Association for Psychological Science in late May in San Francisco.

Congratulations to Scott Hinze who presented his work on testing effects at the 2009 Meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association in May.

Congratulations to Allison Jaeger who presented a paper on embedded classroom simulations and learning in science at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association in San Diego this Spring.

Congratulations to Jason Braasch who was awarded the 2009 Piorkowski Award for his collegiality and scholarship.  The Piorkowski Award is given annually to a student in Behavioral Neuroscience or Cognition who displays creativity, strength of character, and a love of people.  Jason had a stellar year including serving as the co-advisor of Psi Chi, publishing 5 papers on learning from text and using the internet, and mentoring award winning undergrad Hope Lancaster!

Congratulations to Leah Rubin who was awarded first place at the 2009 University of Illinois Graduate Student Research Forum in the Humanities/Social Sciences/Business Practices category, and also was selected as a finalist for the 2009 University of Illinois Graduate Student Symposium for the Chicago Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience competition.

Congratulations to undergraduates Rhoda Jamadar, Hope Lancaster, and Masha Reider, who were awarded 2009 Caterpillar and Kabbes Awards for undergraduate research excellence. Rhoda is being mentored by Pauline Maki and Lauren Drogos on a project investigating the relationship between declarative memory and vasomotor symptoms in men being treated for prostate cancer with anti-androgen treatments. Hope is being mentored by Susan Goldman and Jason Braasch for her project "Think-Aloud as a way to look at learning."  Masha has been working with Jim Pellegrino and Jordan Lippman on 'The role of scientific reasoning skills and relevant background knowledge in judgments about the relationship between cognitive psychological studies and theories.'

Congratulations to undergraduates Hope Lancaster (Advisors, Dr. Susan Goldman and Jason Braasch) and Erik Schuster (Advisors, Dr. Jennifer Wiley and Greg Colflesh) who received 2009-10 Nancy Hirschberg Memorial Award for Undergraduate Research Grants to support their independent study projects.

Congratulations to undergraduate Tom Vakadara who was awarded third place in the 2009-10 Hirschberg Memorial Award for Undergraduate Research in Psychology: Paper Award competition for his report of his independent study project (advisor Dr. Gary Raney).

Congratulations to Andy Jarosz who was awarded a 2008-9 University Fellowship, and Carlos Salas who will receive a 2009-2010 Lincoln Fellowship to support their graduate studies and recognize their excellence in scholarship!  In addition, Carlos will be supported by a Sally Casanova Scholarship to support his research at UIC this summer.

Congratulations to UIC PhD Alumni Mike Bunting who was the recipient of the 2006 Young Investigator Award for the best paper authored by a young investigator during 2006 in Journal of Experimental Psychology:  Learning, Memory, and Cognition.  The winning paper is based on his dissertation from UIC.

Faculty Notes

Congratulations to Jim Pellegrino who has received new funding from IES for The Cognitive, Psychometric, and Instructional Validity of Curriculum-Embedded Assessments: In-Depth Analyses of the Resources Available to Teachers Within "Everyday Mathematics"

Congratulations to Jennifer Wiley who was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship which are granted to highly qualified foreign scientists and scholars for a long-term research stay in Germany. . 

Congratulations to Susan Goldman and Jim Pellegrino who have been recognized as LAS Distinguished Professors by the University.

Congratulations to Jim Pellegrino who has been elected to the National Academy of Education.  The academy consists of a maximum of 200 U.S. members and up to 25 foreign associates who are elected on the basis of outstanding scholarship or contributions to education. 

Congratulations to Stellan Ohlsson was awarded with a 2006-7 Silver Circle Teaching Award and the Graduate Mentoring Prize in 2007-8.

Currently Funded Grants:

Griffin & Wiley (with Thiede, Boise State), IES, Improving Metacomprehension and Self-Regulated Learning From Scientific Texts

Pellegrino & Goldman, NSF, Evaluation of the Cognitive, Psychometric, and Instructional Affordances of Curriculum-Embedded Assessments: A Comprehensive Validity-Based Approach

Pellegrino, NSF, From Research to Practice: Redesigning AP Science Courses to Advance Science Literacy and Support Learning with Understanding

Pellegrino, IES, The Cognitive, Psychometric, and Instructional Validity of Curriculum-Embedded Assessments: In-Depth Analyses of the Resources Available to Teachers Within "Everyday Mathematics"

Wiley, NSF, CAREER grant, Costs and benefits of small group problem solving.

Wiley (with Moher, Computer Science), NSF, Supporting whole-class science investigations with spatial simulations

Conference Locations, Dates and Deadlines:
           AERA, Denver, April 30-May 4, 2010
                               DEADLINE July 15, 2009
           APS, San Francisco, May 22-25, 2009
                               DEADLINE Jan 31, 2009
           Cognitive Science, Amsterdam, July 29-August 1
                               DEADLINE  Feb 1, 2009 
           CSCL/ICLS, Chicago 2010
                               DEADLINE 
           MPA, Chicago, April 29 - May 1, 2010
                               DEADLINE Nov 1, 2009
           Psychonomics, Boston, MA November 19-22, 2009
                               DEADLINE June 1, 2009
           Society for Text & Discourse, Chicago, Aug, 2010
                               DEADLINE circa Feb 1, 2010

Current Graduate Requirements and Policies:
     Current Course Requirements, 2005 and after
     Current Prelim Process Policy Statement 12/1/03 
     Current PhD Process Policy Statement 12/1/03 

  last updated sep 3, 2009 jw