Psychology is the scientific study of individual and collective behavior, the physical and environmental bases of behavior, and the analysis and treatment of behavioral problems and disorders. A truly interdisciplinary course of study, psychology combines elements of medicine, history, culture and public policy.
Our mission is to provide students with an understanding of psychology and what psychologists do, and to give them the background and training that will enhance their careers and/or success in graduate school.
Dr. Neargarder joined the Psychology Department at Bridgewater State University in the Fall of 1999. She primarily teaches courses in Statistics, Research Methods, Biopsychology, and Neuropsychology. She is also the Director of the Honors Program on campus and is a Research Scientist at Boston University's Vision and Cognition Laboratory (http://www.bu.edu/neuropsychology). Her research interests include (1) the investigation of how basic visual deficits affect the real-world functioning of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's patients, and (2) the neuropsychological profiles of patients with various mitochondrial disorders. Her research has been published in a number of peer-reviewed journals including Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology, Vision Research, the Journal of Gerontology, Cortex, Neuropsychology, and Clinical Nutrition.
BS, Wright State University
MA, PhD, Vanderbilt University
Dr. John A. Calicchia came to Bridgewater in 1993 in the Department of Counselor Education where he served as a faculty member, Graduate Program Coordinator and Department Chair before joining the Psychology Department in the Fall of 2007. He has taught a variety of courses including applied pre-adolescent counseling, research methods, and legal and ethical issues. Over the past 20 years, his research and clinical practice have focused mainly on children and adolescence and Dr. Calicchia has an eclectic array of peer-reviewed articles, presentations, and a co-authored book. Dr. Calicchia is a Licensed Psychologist/Health Service Provider in the state of Massachusetts and has special training in child and adolescent psychology. He completed his pre-doctoral internship and post-doctoral fellowship in clinical child psychology at McLean Hospital and served as a Child & Adolescent Psychologist at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
BA, University of Rhode Island
MA, University of Hartford
PhD, Northeastern University
Dr. Englander has been teaching at Bridgewater State University since 1993. Her major area of interest is in the childhood causes of abusive and violent behavior, and her research examines bullying and cyberbullying behaviors during the school years. She has taught ten different undergraduate courses, three of which she introduced to the Psychology curriculum. She also developed an internship program in Forensic Psychology. She has served as department chair and, during her time at Bridgewater, has published peer-reviewed articles, three editions of a book, has served as a Guest Editor for a Special Edition of The Journal of Social Sciences, and has published numerous other articles. She has presented her work at many conferences and has given numerous presentations and media interviews. She has been cited in newspapers and has appeared on television and radio locally, nationally and internationally. She has received eight external grants and several internal grants. She was the University's first Presidential Fellow, and received that grant and award for establishing and directing the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center (MARC) at Bridgewater. MARC works with Bridgewater State University students in bringing bullying and cyberbullying research and programs to K-12 schools in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In 2005 she was awarded the Course of Distinction Award by Massachusetts Colleges Online and Bridgewater's Distance Learning Award. Dr. Englander has testified in front of the Senate and was appointed to the Massachusetts Attorney General's Safe School Initiative Task Force under former Attorney General Thomas Reilly. She helped author and pass state legislation, and has trained thousands of teachers and tens of thousands of students in the Commonwealth.
BA, University of California at Berkley
MA, PhD, University of Southern California
Dr. Hannon has taught numerous courses in the Psychology Department since 1979. With faculty from Communication Studies and Social Work, she teaches Perspectives of the Holocaust an effort which has won the Presidential Award for Collaboration in Teaching and in 2007, the Action Teaching Award, Honorable Mention from the Social Psychology Network. Recently, Dr. Hannon designed a course, Service-Learning in Psychology in which Bridgewater State University students study boys' development and work with a group of young boys from the Big Sisters/Big Brothers program in Brockton, MA. In 2001-2002 Dr. Hannon was a Visiting Scholar at the Centers for Women at Wellesley College where she designed a qualitative research program to study working families in Northern Ireland focusing on the effects of ongoing political violence on work-family life there. She has presented her work at three international conferences and several national and regional conferences. She has published on work-family issues and recently had a book review published in The Irish Journal of Psychology. Dr. Hannon has received multiple internal grants and most recently, won a federal Learn and Serve grant to establish service-learning courses at Bridgewater. She chaired the Psychology Department for several years and is active on multiple University committees including the Service-Learning Task Force.
BS, Wayne State University
PhD, Catholic University of America
Dr. Holmes joined Bridgewater in the fall of 2000 and has taught a variety of courses, including Introductory Psychology, Introductory Psychology honors sections, Statistics for Psychology, Research Methods, History of Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Biopsychology, and Psychology and Literature. He recently served a term as Chair of the Psychology Department from Fall 2008 through Spring 2010. Dr. Holmes' current research interests involve issues surrounding consciousness and cognition, and their intersection with philosophy, neuroscience, and the history of psychology. He has also completed research in the past on the phenomenology of false memories, published in The Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, as well as research on children's theory of mind. He is currently working on the history of thinking about the mind, starting with the Homeric literature and Ancient Greeks.
BA, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
MA, PhD, State University of New York at Stony Brook
Dr. Jameson has taught a variety of courses including Cognitive Psychology, the Psychology of Aging and Introductory Psychology. At Bridgewater State University, Dr. Jameson has taught Research Methods at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, Survey of Psychological Testing, Social Psychology and the Psychology of Learning. Dr. Jameson's research interests are in the area of cognitive neuropsychology, specifically the role of working memory in decision making, aging and disorders that affect the frontal lobes. Her publications have been included in peer-reviewed journals such as the Psychonomic Bulletin and Review and The Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition. Dr. Jameson is always interested in getting students involved in her research.
BA, Whitman College
MA, University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth
PhD, Washington State University, 2004
Dr. Johnson has been teaching at Bridgewater State University for more than thirty years. She has taught fourteen different undergraduate and three graduate courses, six of which she developed. She has served on a number of committees both inside and outside the department, and was involved in the piloting of First-Year Seminars, to be offered as part of the University's new curriculum. Her primary interest lies in the investigation of evolutionary psychology and its interface with developmental, social, and clinical fields. She has developed several new courses on the subject and has integrated the perspective into every course she teaches. Her research interest is in testing evolutionary hypotheses - for example, those on behavioral and psychological sex differences at all points in development - in order to develop effective pscyhoeducational interventions for couples and families experiencing relationship difficulties.
BA, Macalester College
MA, PhD, Boston University
Teresa K. King, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Psychology Department and Co-Coordinator of the Adrian Tinsley Program (ATP) for Undergraduate Research. She received her doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the University of Houston. She completed her internship and post-doctoral fellowship at Brown Medical School. Her research examines psychological factors that have an effect on health with a particular focus on body image. She has presented her research at international and national conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals. She has an active body image research lab that serves primarily to provide undergraduate students with research experience. Dr. King strongly believes in the transformative nature of undergraduate research and has mentored several ATP semester and summer grants, honor's theses, and directed studies. The undergraduate courses she teaches include: Orientation to the Major, Introductory Psychology (regular and honors), Abnormal Psychology, Research, Survey of Psychological Testing, Health Psychology, and the honors second year seminar Movies and Mental Disorders. She also teaches Psychopathology in the graduate program.
BS, MA, PhD, University of Houston
Dr. Mamberg is a Clinical Psychologist. Her post-doctoral clinical experiences included counseling New Yorkers following the World Trade Center attack in 2001 and working at Pace University's Counseling Center in Westchester, N.Y. Dr. Mamberg's clinical work focuses on anxiety, depression and trauma sequellae in young adults; and her therapeutic style incorporates relational-dynamic and interpersonal approaches with cognitive-behavioral techniques. She has continued her professional development by becoming trained in the teaching of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction at the Center for Mindfulness, at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Dr. Mamberg's theoretical interests primarily focus on socio-cultural and discursive aspects of self development, as well as the impact of trauma and loss on identity and developmental processes. She has mentored students on various quantitative and qualitative research projects, two of which were presented at the 5th International Conference on the Dialogical Self. Dr. Mamberg teaches a variety of undergraduate courses, including Clinical Psychology, Psychology of Personality, Abnormal Psychology, and Orientation to the Major. At the graduate level, she teaches Psychotherapy: Theory and Practice, I; an advanced seminar on Trauma & Loss and she supervises students during their field placements.
BA, State University of New York at Purchase, 1987
MA, Clark University, 1994
PhD, Clark University 2002
Dr. Morse's research focuses on psychometrics (the development and validation of tests and surveys) as well as the interaction between mathematics and psychology. Specifically, Dr. Morse is exploring issues surrounding the ambiguity of measurement in psychological research. The ambiguity of measurement highlights the problem that there is always a disconnect between what we are trying to measure (e.g., intelligence) and what we can actually quantify (e.g., test or scale scores). This raises a host of questions about how accurately any measurement system actually represents something that cannot be directly measured. More importantly perhaps, it also raises questions about our ability to manipulate those numbers (with mathematical operations) and still maintain our ability to interpret the results of our findings. Dr. Morse has published his work in a variety of scientific journals and is always seeking interested students who want to discuss and/or work on questions surrounding measurement in psychology.
BS, Pennsylvania State University, Psychology
MS, PhD, Ohio University, Industrial/Organizational Psychology
Dr. Nicholas joined the Department of Psychology in September, 1998. His area of specialization is Industrial/Organizational Psychology. Dr. Nicholas teaches Introductory Psychology, Social Psychology, I/O Psychology, Statistics, and Research Methods. His research interests include social cognition, social influence, attitudes, and emotional reactions especially when applied to behavior in the workplace.
BS, Salem State University, 1986
MS, PhD, Purdue University, 1993
Dr. Olivares has been with the department of Psychology since 1996. He earned his PhD in Industrial and Organizational Psychology and has several years of corporate experience, as both an internal and external consultant. His areas of expertise are individual differences and human performance, leadership development, organization culture and performance, and selection and validation. Dr. Olivares regularly teaches courses in Introductory Psychology, Statistics and Research Methods, Learning, Personality, and Industrial/Organizational Psychology. From 2007-2010, Dr. Olivares served as the Chair of Institutional Review Board at Bridgewater State University. In addition to his teaching, consulting, and service work, Dr. Olivares has authored numerous peer-reviewed journal articles. He is the first author on articles that have appeared in The Leadership and Organization Development Journal, Review of General Psychology, Teaching in Higher Education, Excellence in College Teaching, Contemporary Educational Psychology, Issues in Educational Research, Radical Pedagogy, and Occupational Health and Safety.
BS, Regis University
MS, New Mexico Highlands University
PhD, Texas A&M University
Dr. Ramsey joined the Bridgewater State University psychology department in 2011. She is currently teaching courses in Introductory Psychology and Research Methods. Her research has focused on three primary areas: 1) stereotyping & prejudice, 2) objectification, and 3) the underrepresentation of women in math & science fields. For example, she has published papers examining implicit (unconscious) versus explicit (conscious) stereotypes, the consequences of objectification for romantic relationships, and how women who increasingly endorse the women-are-bad-at-math stereotype over the course of a semester perform worse in their math class. She particularly enjoys collaborating with students on research projects.
BS, University of Mary Washington, Psychology
MS, PhD, University of Michigan, Social Psychology
Dr. Richards has been teaching in the Psychology Department at Bridgewater State University since 1976. He has taught a total of twenty-one different courses, seven of which he introduced to the Psychology curriculum. He served one term as Department Chair and has served on a number of committees, both within and outside of the Department. Dr. Richards' primary interest includes developing web-based interactive tutorials that are consistent with principles derived from research in learning and education. His other interests include behavior genetics, cross-cultural psychology, and the psychology of altruistic behavior. These interests have led to the development of new courses within the Psychology Department.
BA, University of Missouri
MA, PhD, Clark University
Dr. Shyne received her PhD from Northeastern University in the fall of 2005. Since completing her dissertation she has taught six different undergraduate courses: Statistics, Research Methods, Introduction to Psychology, Nonverbal Communication, Animal Behavior, and a learning community course in Animal Behavior and Behavioral Economics. Her research is conducted at the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston, MA and focuses on zoo animal welfare. She recently published a comprehensive meta-analysis looking at the effects of environmental enrichment on stereotypic behavior in zoo mammals. She is currently interested in the effects of husbandry training on the behavioral time budgets of three species of big cats and hopes to get Bridgewater undergraduate students involved in the project.
BA, Stonehill College
MA, PhD, Northeastern University
Dr. Singer received her Ph.D. from The University of Chicago in 2004 where she examined the role of social input on children's knowledge change. Dr.Singer focused primarily on the role of hand gestures in instruction and learning of mathematical problem-solving. After completing her graduate training, she continued her work at The Learning Sciences Research Institute in Chicago investigating the role of hand gestures as well as other visual forms of representations on children's scientific reasoning. Dr. Singer published this work in the journal, Discourse Processes. Currently, Dr. Singer explores the ways in which gesture and other nonverbal representations shape children's scientific and mathematical reasoning, as well as the ways children construct meaning around these representations in both laboratory and applied settings. Dr. Singer teaches Child Psychology, Research Methods in Psychology, Nonverbal Communication, and a Second Year Seminar on gesture.
BA, Northeastern Illinois University
MA, PhD, University of Chicago
Dr. Spievak, joined the department in 2003. She teaches a variety of courses including Introductory Psychology (including honors), Statistics and Research Methods, Cognitive, Criminal Behavior, Forensics and Special Topics. Elizabeth has a research lab in which students participate in all aspects of research, from design to presentation, over several semesters and years. The students are engaged in ongoing research in various stages, most centering around attentional processes, particularly as they apply to legal decision making and coping. In addition to her duties at Bridgewater, Elizabeth does trial consulting and maintains a working relationship with colleagues in the legal field.
BS, Indiana University
MBA, Miami University
MA, Wright State University
PhD, University of Louisville
Dr. Todd has been teaching in the Psychology Department at Bridgewater State University since 1974, and is also a licensed acupuncturist. She has taught sixteen different undergraduate and four graduate courses, twelve of which she developed. She has mentored undergraduate student research presented at undergraduate research paper conferences, and has also mentored graduate Master's theses. In1981, she developed a Departmental Concentration in Medical and Health Psychology, and served as the coordinator of this Concentration until 2004. In 1999, she was a co-developer of the Exploring Consciousness Learning Community. In 2002, she developed a new model for teaching Research Methods and Statistics as linked courses so that students could take them together within a single semester. She developed and served as the coordinator for our graduate program in clinical psychology for fifteen years, and served as the Department Chair for three years.
She has served on numerous committees both within and outside of the Department, and is a member of two professional societies. She has presented at workshops and regional conferences, and has presented at two national conferences. She has written several articles and has developed a series of educational videos. In 2001, she received a small grant from the Center of the Advancement in Research and Teaching to examine the role of self-regulation in learning, health care, and psychotherapeutic change. This research was presented in a poster session at the American Psychological Association and published in a peer reviewed journal. She received two program development grants for Web courses, and has developed and now teaches two Web-based psychology courses; in 2009 she was awarded the Course of Distinction Award by Massachusetts Colleges Online and Bridgewater's Distance Learning Award. Currently, Dr. Todd coordinates the Department's Peer Assisted Learning Program.
BA, PhD, Vanderbilt University
The department offers a BS in Psychology, a minor in psychology, and a graduate MA program with a specialization in Clinical Psychotherapy. Our Honors Program gives highly motivated majors the opportunity to augment their education through intensive scholarly study and research.
Psychology degrees have become one of the most popular options at colleges and universities worldwide. In addition to encouraging tremendous personal growth, these degrees open up a wide range of career possibilities. Skilled psychologists are in demand in clinical health and counseling settings, industrial-organizational settings and schools as well as in the realms of forensics, product safety and design, and human-computer interaction.
