Member Recognition

Division 34 Awards and Recognition

Proshansky-Newman — Professional Achievement Award

The Newman-Proshansky is the Division's professional achievement award. When it is bestowed to an environmental psychologist, it is called the "Proshansky-Newman award," and it is the "Newman-Proshansky award" when conferred to a population psychologist. This is the second year of the award's existence. The first award was announced at the 2006 APA Convention and was awarded to Irwin Altman, Ph.D.

The award is named after Sidney H. Newman and Harold M. Proshansky. Sidney Newman was active in an APA Task Force on Psychology, Family Planning and Population Policy established in 1969 that brought population and human reproductive issues to broader attention in American psychology and eventually led to the formation of the Division (Richards, 2000), having edited an influential monograph together with Vaida Thompson in 1976. Among other positions, Newman served in the U.S. Public Health Service and in the Center for Population Research at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (Thompson & David, 1990).

Harold M. Proshansky helped give definition to the field of environmental psychology when his Environmental Psychology in the Real World was published in 1976. Proshansky abandoned his earlier laboratory research because he saw the methods rather than the problem as driving the research and sought to pursue psychological research on problems of poverty, prejudice and group conflict (Rivlin & Denmark, 1995). Proshansky became provost and then president of the Graduate School and the University Center of the City University of New York.

CURRENT COMMITTEE

2008: The 2008 award committee consists of James "Mac" Richards, Ph.D. (chair), Jack Aiello, Ph.D., Jennifer Veitch, Ph.D., and Toni Falbo, Ph.D. The awards committee is currently seeking nominations for the recipient of the next professional award, which will be presented at the 2008 APA Convention. Nominations for outstanding environment and/or population psychologists are welcome. Only current and emeritus members of Division 34 are eligible. Nominations should include the nominee's name, an up-to-date address, and a brief account of his/her professional contributions. Submit nominations to the awards committee chair, James M. Richards, Jr., at bonniemacrich@aol.com.

AWARD WINNERS

2007: Dr. Falbo received a PhD in Social Psychology from UCLA in 1973. Most of her career she has served on the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin and in the University's Population Research Center. Currently she is Professor of Educational Psychology and Sociology, and in that capacity has Chaired more than 50 Doctoral Dissertation Committees. She has an outstanding record of research on only children and their families and on China's One Child Population Policy. She has been selected a Fellow in three Divisions of APA, the Division of Population and Environmental Psychology, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, and the Division of the Psychology of Women. She has served as President of the Division of Population and Environmental Psychology and of the Southwestern Psychological Association.

2006: The first professional achievement award was given to Irwin Altman, Ph.D., a Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah, who developed the integrative privacy model and has conducted extensive research on physical environments and context, and their impact on interpersonal behaviors. He also co-edited the Handbook of Environmental Psychology (1987) with Daniel Stokols, Ph.D.

Division 34 Outstanding student award

The first ever Division 34 outstanding student award will be announced at the 2007 APA Convention. The details of this award are still under consideration, and this year's Student Awards Committee will be tasked with clearly defining the criteria for award, as well as selecting the award recipient. Committee members are still needed. If you are interested in participating on this committee, contact Susan Clayton (sclayton@wooster.edu). Please encourage your graduate students to submit their work to Division 34 sessions. You may also nominate students who have conducted quality, topical research.