Awards and Fellowships

First Year Project Award

All psychology doctoral students take the lead on a research project their first year. By the end of the first semester, each student gives a brief presentation to their cohort in the First Year Doctoral Student Colloquium Series. In October of their second year, now second year students present the results of their first year project as a poster in a Department-wide poster session. Faculty vote on the top posters.

Here are the winners last year:

2017 Poster session (2016 cohort)

Cassandra Baldwin - 1st place

Tristin Nyman - 2nd place

Hannah Kim - 3rd place

STAR-COG Summer Award

The STAR-COG Award is an award given to an outstanding graduate student conducting research in any area of Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience. The aim of the program is to provide graduate student support in the form of a stipend over the summer term so that an outstanding student may complete a proposed research project. Research projects may include writing and submitting a manuscript for publication (either a theoretical/review paper or an empirical report) or completing and submitting a grant application. The project must be in an advanced stage at the beginning of the summer term so that the recipient can complete the project by August 31.

Bluebonnet Summer Award

The Clinical Area Summer Research (CASR) Award is a scholarship of $6,000 earned from the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences (PBSI) to an outstanding Clinical Psychology (CLPY) graduate student conducting research in any area of clinical psychology. The aim of the scholarship is to provide graduate student support over the Summer term so that an outstanding student may complete a proposed research project. Research projects should include plans for writing and submitting a manuscript for publication (either a theoretical/review paper or an empirical report) and/or for completing and submitting a grant application. The project must be in an advanced stage no later than the beginning of June so that the recipient can complete the project by August 31.

Saul Sells Research Excellence Award

Saul Sells

Each year doctoral students are selected by the Graduate Studies Committee to receive the Saul Sells Research Excellence Awards. These awards are funded by an endowment given to the Department of Psychology by Dr. Saul B. Sells in 1989. The award is intended to recognize those graduate students who have demonstrated excellence in research prior to receipt of the doctoral degree. In addition, their names are engraved on a plaque displayed in the Sells Conference Room.

Dr. Sells had no children and was dedicated to his career as a psychologist. His graduate students were his “children” and he supported them not only financially, through his many grants, but through the gift of his time in mentoring them to become productive scholars. This award is intended to support graduate students in their work as he did for so many students and to reward those who are most committed to scholarship.

2019 Recipients