Interested in leading a Student Directed Seminar (SDS) in the 2015/16 academic year?
SDS’s allow senior undergraduate students to either participate in or initiate and coordinate small, collaborative, group learning experiences. Examples of previous courses include topics on ADHD and Alzheimers. Learn more.
About
You’ll have the chance to create a 400-level seminar with the help of a faculty member to fill a niche that the department and/or university currently does not address adequately. With your faculty mentor, you co-create course requirements and assessment techniques and in so doing, you learn an extensive amount about the topic of the course, as well as course administration and other teaching-related skills.
The faculty members listed below are open to sponsoring a student:
Dr. Sunaina Assanand (assanand[at]psych.ubc.ca)
Interested in a wide range of topics. Areas of greatest interest include gender psychology, social psychology, political psychology, and personality psychology. Examples of SDSs that she has sponsored in the past include Transformative Education: Exploitation, Violence, and the Sexes; The Social Construction of Sexual Deviance: Paraphilias and the DSM V; Multidisciplinary Approaches to Sport and Exercise; and ADHD: Attention Detours on a Highway Drive.
Dr. Steven Barnes (sjb[at]psych.ubc.ca)
His interests are focused on, but not limited to, topics related to knowledge translation, neurological and psychiatric disorders, drugs and addiction. http://psyc304.metaplasticity.com/
Dr. Colleen Brenner (cbrenner[at]psych.ubc.ca)
Her interests generally lie within the field of clinical psychology with a focus on symptom characterization and cognition in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. She is also interested in the experiential effects of cannabis use and how it relates to social functioning and personality traits. She is willing to supervise seminars broadly related to these topics. http://ccnlab.psych.ubc.ca/
Dr. Catherine Rawn (cdrawn[at]psych.ubc.ca)
Her interests relate to positive social psychology, including topics such as goal setting, self-control, motivation, procrastination, implicit theories, and engaged learning. For more information about her approach to teaching, please visit: www.psych.ubc.ca/~cdrawn
Dr. Michael Souza (souza[at]psych.ubc.ca)
His interests are primarily focused on topics related to neuropsychology, including (but not limited to) neurodevelopment, brain dysfunction/injury, and recovery. For more about SDSs that he has supervised, please visit here: http://webman1.psych.ubc.ca/souza/for-students/sds/
Dr. Rebecca Todd (becket.todd[at]psych.ubc.ca)
Her research interests lie at the interface of cognition and emotion. Her research program investigates the neural underpinnings of affective salience, or the emotional importance of aspects of the environment. She is interested in how different forms of affective salience bias attention and memory, and how such biases develop over the lifespan and ultimately influence emotional health and well-being. How does our life experience combine with our genetic inheritance so that we see and remember specific aspects of the world? What interactions between genetic predisposition and experience create filters that allow us to thrive or render us susceptible to addiction or psychopathology? http://mclab.psych.ubc.ca/
Applying for mentorship with one of the above faculty
Please send your CV/resume and a one-page statement of interest (i.e., a description of the course you envision, why it is unique, and why you’d be qualified to assemble it) to the appropriate faculty member by Friday, January 9th at 12PM. Qualified candidates will be contacted for an interview where you will give a Powerpoint presentation to “pitch” your course.
