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Rebecca Wang, psychology undergraduate student, receives the Golden Eagle Award of Excellence

	March 2013: The Golden Eagle Awards of Excellence recognize the outstanding achievements of CSULA students who have made important contributions to the campus and to their communities. Rebecca Wang, an undergraduate senior who will be completing her double major in Psychology and Political Science this spring, was one of the recipients of this year's awards. Recipients were honored at a reception held on Wednesday, March 6 that included family, friends, and campus dignitaries. In addition to pursuing a double major and placing on the Dean’s Honor List for three consecutive years, Rebecca is also a member of Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society and Golden Key International Honour Society. She is also a gold leader for Camp Golden Eagle, a mentoring program for first year freshmen. This year, she has also served as a mentor for CSULA’s 2nd Annual Pride Mentorship Project where LGBTQ college students spend a day getting to know their high school counterparts and discussing issues in the community. Rebecca has worked previously as a student assistant in the psychology department office and is currently working as a customer service assistant at the Cross Cultural Centers. Both of these jobs have allowed her to interact with the students at CSULA, helping to answer questions, address concerns, and connect them to programs on campus.

As a gold leader mentor, Rebecca has had the opportunity to mentor first time freshmen, attend events with them, and help them adjust to CSULA. As a member of Golden Key, an honor society heavily focused on service, she has been able to volunteer for various causes in the surrounding community, including hosting a book fair, doing crafts with children, doing spring cleaning for Anna Bing Arnold Child Care Center, planting trees, organizing and cleaning at the Downtown Women’s shelter, walking dogs at Furbaby animal rescue, building homes for low income families with Habitat for Humanity, feeding the homeless on Thanksgiving as part of the annual Gobble Gobble Give Day, feeding the homeless at the midnight mission, volunteering with Padres Contra El Cancer at a picnic for children with cancer, volunteering for fundraising efforts at Bruin Walk, Alzheimer’s Walk, Light The Night, and Ronald MacDonald’s House Walk For Kids, wrapping donated Christmas gifts for charity with Friends and Helpers, and helping to organize a trip to visit the USS Iowa for disabled veterans. Finally, taking part in Pride Mentorship really opened Rebecca’s eyes to the struggles of queer youth in the community at large.
Rebecca’s ultimate goal is to go to law school, specialize in environmental law, and work for either a government agency or a non-profit organization. Her primary interest lies in protecting natural resources from corporate exploitation and pollution.

The 21st Annual Cal State L.A. Symposium on Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities (RSCA) took place on Friday, February 22, 2013. The symposium provided several of the department’s undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to showcase their research and scholarly work via oral or poster presentations. The event gave judges, guests, and fellow participants a glimpse of the gifted and stimulating work that is being done by our psychology students under the invaluable guidance of our faculty mentors.

The department wishes to congratulate all psychology students who participated and a special thanks to faculty mentors who helped to make this year’s symposium a wonderful success. Below is a list of our student presenters. Winners (to be announced at a later date) go on to represent Cal State LA in a CSU-statewide competition to be held at Cal Poly Pomona on May 10 and 11, 2013.

Oral Presentations (University Student Union)

Student name(s)	Degree program	Presentation title	Faculty mentor
Brenna Dotson	MS Forensic Psychology	The Effects of Gang Affiliation on Verdict Choice	Mitchell Eisen
Marissa Garay and Halima Barreto	BA/MS Forensic Psychology	Social Anxiety and Presentation of the False Self on Facebook	Kaveri Subrahmanyam and Minas Michikyan
Tyler Hatchel and Andrew Frane	BA Psychology	Me, Myself, and My Facebook: Narcissism and Self-presentation on Facebook	Kaveri Subrahmanyam and Minas Michikyan
Rachel Mendez	BA Psychology	Haunted by the Past, Drowning out the Present: Parental Conflict and Substance Use in Intimate Partner Violence	Gaithri Fernando
Belen Oceguera	BA Psychology	Barriers to Recovery from Multiple Traumas: The Impact of Culture and Minority Status	Gaithri Fernando
Marilyn Orozco and Maisam Othman	MS Forensic Psychology	“We got the guy”: How overhearing suggestive information can lead to false identifications	Mitchell Eisen
Sibella Salazar	MA Psychology	American Indian Ethnic Identity	Jessica Dennis
Tony Ye	MA Psychology	Cognitive Inflexibility After Adolescent Methamphetamine Exposure	Alicia Izquierdo
Rogelio Carrillo	MA Psychology	Reading Comprehension as a Function of Bilingualism	Kaveri Subrahmanyam and Minas Michikyan
Wendy Ochoa	BA Psychology	Language Mixing Among Preschool Dual Language Learners	Kaveri Subrahmanyam

Poster Presentations (Golden Eagle Ballroom)

Student name(s)	Degree program	Presentation title	Faculty mentor
Ana Fonseca, Phoebe Lee, Sibella Salazar, and Liana Kostandyan	BA/MA Psychology	Maintenance of Latino Culture among Latino Young Adults and Parents	Jessica Dennis
Sherry Wang and Rogelio Gonzalez	BA Psychology	College Stress and Psychological Adjustment among Ethnically Diverse Students: an Examination of Spirituality as a Moderator	Munyi Shea
Guadalupe Gutierrez, Lilibeth Lira, Vivian Lee, and Ruby Fletes	BA Psychology	Family Support: A Key to Biculturalism	Jessica Dennis
Guadalupe Gutierrez and Sandy Wang	BA/MA Psychology	Parenting Behavior and School-Aged Bullying Experience: Association with Self-Esteem in Young Adults	Munyi Shea and Robert Kennison
Cristal Hernandez Santiago	BA Psychology	Language Change in Mexican-American Dual Language Learners: Examining Spanish Errors	Kaveri Subrahmanyam
Veronica Romo-Silva and Ayana Younge	BA/MA Psychology	Perceptions of Relationship Conflict: Links with Parental Marital Conflict and Divorce	Heidi Riggio
Bryant Salinas	BA Psychology	The Effect of Word Valence and Environmental Sound on Working Memory	Theodore Bell and Pamela Harman
Winnie Shi and Yu Zhang	MA/BA Psychology	Parents and Teachers’ Perspectives on Asian and Latino Immigrant Children’s School Bullying Experience	Munyi Shea

Dr. Kaveri Subrahmanyam participated in a panel, "Will Gaming Change the Way We Learn," that took place at the MOCA in Downtown LA...

Dec. 2012: Dr. Kaveri Subrahmanyam's talk, "Will Gaming Change the Way We Learn," took place in Downtown LA's MOCA Grand Avenue. Speaking to a jam-packed audience, the panel of experts discussed the impact of video games on learning. Check out the video below. To read more about the event, click here: "Teachers of Yesteryear, Bow To the Awesomeness of Minecraft"

Dr. Ramani Durvasula receives the 2012-2013 Outstanding Professor Award

Sept. 2012, from CSULA News Release: At Cal State L.A., the annual Outstanding Professor Awards recognize excellence in teaching and cite significant achievements in scholarly inquiry or creativity, professional activities, and service to the campus and community. Frequently referred by the media as a psychology expert and a mental health commentator, Ramani Durvasula has conducted research on the neuropsychiatric aspects of HIV, sexual risk behaviors, substance use, psychosocial factors and health, eating disorders, and health and ethnicity.

More recently, Durvasula has been exploring the role of mental health in the media, and exploring such global issues as the health issues faced by girls and women who are victims of human trafficking. She authored a book on health and wellness that will be released in 2013 and has recently started working on her second book. Additionally, her work and expert opinion has been cited in numerous print and internet media outlets. She was featured on Bravo's THINtervention and on the Dr. Oz Show, among other TV programs. On Oct. 9, she will be co-host of My Shopping Addiction on Oxygen. Her research has been funded by the National Institute of General Medical Science and the National Institute of Mental Health. She is presently in the second year of the Health Adherence Research Project, a continuation of her longitudinal work examining major psychopathology and personality disorders on sexual health, substance use, and overall health in persons living with HIV/AIDS and those at risk for infection.

A CSULA faculty since 1999, Durvasula teaches a wide range of topics, including introductory psychology, psychopathology, research design, health psychology, clinical psychology, assessment, and substance use. One of her students commented: "She brings her real-world experiences and scientific knowledge together in her classroom. I consider myself lucky to have had her as a mentor. She will be an inspiration for the rest of my life." Another wrote: "This professor is entirely responsible for igniting my passion for research." A licensed clinical psychologist in private practice in Los Angeles, Durvasula is past chair of the American Psychological Association's (APA) Committee on Psychology and AIDS, and vice chair elect of the APA's Committee on Women and Psychology. She completed her master's degree and doctorate in clinical psychology at UCLA, and her clinical training at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. The American Association of University Women awarded her the 2003 Emerging Scholar Award, and in that same year, she was the recipient of a Distinguished Women Award from Cal State L.A.