News Release
October 2002
(Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) - Dr. Dana Dunn, a professor
of Psychology at Moravian College, recently helped to organize the national
conference, "Measuring Up: Best Practices in Assessment in Psychology
Education," held in Atlanta, Georgia. Along with ten colleagues
from different educational institutions, Dr. Dunn has designed this
conference for the past two years. It attracted over 220 psychology
educators and focused on how assessment is being employed by such educators.
Dr. Dunn conducted a session on writing strategies and assessing student
performance.
In collaboration with two other conference coordinators,
Dr. Chandra Mehrotra from The College of St. Scholastica and Dr. Jane
Halonen from James Madison University, Dr. Dunn is editing a book based
on presentations made at this conference. It is scheduled to be published
in late 2003 or early 2004 by the American Psychological Association
with the possible title, Measuring Up: Assessment Challenges and
Practices for Psychology.
Dr. Dunn is an experimental social psychologist who studies
social cognition and health psychology. He earned his B.A. at Carnegie
Mellon University and received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University
of Virginia. His areas of interest include social cognition and health
psychology. His current research explores causal attributions made by
people coping with health-related problems. He is the author of two
books. His first one, The Practical Researcher: A Student Guide
to Conducting Psychological Research (McGraw-Hill, 1999), details
research methods in psychology. His second book, Statistics and
Data Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences, was just published in
2001. This book combines quantitative aspects of statistics with written
explanations of the data means in such a way so that students will understand
and learn from the results. Written not just for students of psychology,
this book is also valuable for students studying sociology, education,
and other social-behavioral disciplines.
Dr. Bob Brill, another professor of psychology at Moravian
College, also attended the conference. He wrote two papers discussing
his course assessment methods. The first paper, "Behavior Checklists:
Practicing What We Preach," explored a student generated assessment
tool used by Dr. Brill in his Job Motivation course. The second paper
was entitled "A Portfolio Approach to Introductory Psychology with
Interdisciplinary Objectives." This essay focused on a portfolio
system created by Dr. Brill, based on changes he made to his course,
Principles and Applications of Psychology, because of the outcomes of
the Learning in Common requirement, Economic, Social, and Political
Systems.
Dr. Brill, an industrial/organizational psychologist obtained
his B.A. from LaSalle University and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Virginia
Polytechnic Institute and State University. His areas of interest are
applied and experimental issues pertaining to performance appraisal,
work motivation, employee assistance programs, and work-family balance.
Moravian College is a private, coeducational, selective
liberal arts college located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Tracing its
founding to 1742, it is recognized as America's sixth-oldest college.
Visit the Web site at www.moravian.edu.
