UA psychology students and alumnae win big in 2020

01/07/2021

This past year, four students and alumnae from The University of Akron’s nationally renowned Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychology program won major scholarship and teaching awards from the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Academy of Management (AOM).

  • Ketaki Sodhi, a current Ph.D. student, won the Leslie W. Joyce and Paul W. Thayer Graduate Fellowship from the SIOP, to support her ongoing work on her dissertation, “Job Insecurity and Feedback Seeking: The Role of Trait Goal Orientation, Motives, and Feedback Environment in Predicting Feedback-Seeking Strategies.”
  • Catalina Flores, another current Ph.D. student, won the Irwin L. Goldstein Scholarship from the SIOP, to support her ongoing work on her dissertation, “Linking Diversity Climate and Feedback-Seeking Through Interpersonal Processes and Race Effects.”
  • Dr. Alexandra Zelin (Ph.D. ‘17), currently an assistant professor at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC), won the Mary Roth Walsh Teaching the Psychology of Women award from the APA, in recognition of her many contributions to the discipline, including her success in teaching the Psychology of Women Course at UTC.
  • Dr. Allison Gabriel (Ph.D. ‘13), currently an associate professor and Robbins Fellow at the University of Arizona, won the Early Career Achievement Award from the Human Resources Division of the AOM, in recognition of her many achievements within the first seven years of receiving her doctorate, including publishing more than 40 peer-reviewed articles in distinguished journals. She also won the Lawrence R. James Early Career Achievement Award from the Research Methods Division of the AOM in 2019.

“The I/O program has a long history of national acclaim and is fortunate to attract the very best students from all over the world,” said Dr. Paul Levy, professor and chair of the Department of Psychology.

“The students and alumnae highlighted here are exceptional,” Levy added. “They follow in a long line of Ph.D. graduates from our I/O, Counseling, and Adult Development and Aging programs that have made outstanding contributions to their respective fields. Our undergraduate psychology majors also benefit from what these graduate students have to offer, as both graduate and undergraduate students work side-by-side with our faculty scholars on cutting-edge, impactful research.”

UA’s Department of Psychology is also associated with the country’s only National Museum of Psychology.