Psychology Faculty Honored with Awards for Diversity Leadership, Advising, Teaching, and Research Excellence
Psychology Faculty Honored with Awards for Diversity Leadership, Advising, Teaching, and Research Excellence
During the 2023 College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Convocation, several faculty in the Department of Psychology were honored for excellence in teaching, advising, research, and outreach.
Kalynn Schulz, Assistant Professor
Diversity Leadership Award
Schulz is a remarkable scholar and educator whose actions on campus, regionally, and nationally, demonstrate an unwavering commitment to increasing academic representation of and support for scholars from historically marginalized groups.
Schulz’s diversity leadership is perhaps best exemplified by her developing and launching a pilot, cross-institutional research training program between the psychology departments at UT Knoxville and the historically Black university Tennessee State University called STARS (Scholarly Trainees Acquiring Research Skills). The program was designed to prepare TSU students for graduate-level research in psychology and support their transition into graduate school.
Schulz energized department-wide involvement of faculty and graduate students as research mentors, academic coaches, and peer mentors. TSU students from the first cohort are now thriving in graduate school.
Caglar Tas, Assistant Professor
Excellence in Teaching Awards: Junior
Tas is an outstanding teacher and mentor who cares deeply about her students’ learning. She has taught courses at the undergraduate and graduate level, largely focused on research methods, which are some of the most difficult courses for psychology majors.
Tas demonstrates remarkable skill in engaging students and providing opportunities to apply the material learned in her courses. She encourages students to ask questions and actively participate in discussions. Students in her courses describe her as “an amazing professor,” “always accessible,” and “incredibly knowledgeable.” In addition to the courses she teaches, Tas is an extremely sought-after mentor at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Her incredible passion about teaching and mentoring truly energizes her students.
Kalynn Schulz, Assistant Professor
Faculty Advising Service Awards
Schulz exemplifies our college’s commitment to outstanding advising, implementing proactive and developmental advising models to build positive working relationships with students in support of their academic and career goals. Schulz is committed to supporting all students, and especially under-represented minority students. Students consistently express gratitude for her care and concern for their personal well-being in course evaluations.
One student noted, “Schulz thinks of the students who tend to be shy and embarrassed to ask questions in class and the students who may not be doing well and openly offers her most undivided attention and support to assure us that she will always be there to help. Schulz is more than a professor, teacher, instructor—she is a life mentor and an inspiration.”
Chris Elledge, Associate Professor
Faculty Academic Outreach Award: Research & Creative Activity
Elledge’s research program is focused on bullied, socially marginalized, and anxious youth in the Knoxville community. He is a highly valued and accomplished associate professor and associate director of clinical training for the clinical psychology PhD program in the Department of Psychology. Elledge has particular interest in developing school-based interventions that can promote or enrich the peer relationships of at-risk youth.
His commitment to serving children and families in the Knoxville community is exceptionally impressive. His Recess VOLs program pairs at-risk children with UT student mentors who visit children twice weekly for two academic semesters. The program has placed approximately 450 UT students with children across 10 Knox County elementary schools, serving approximately 300 youth.
Deborah Welsh, Professor
Distinguished Research Career at UT
Deborah Welsh has been a faculty member in psychology at UT for more than 30 years and has an exceptional record of research scholarship and student research mentorship. Her research program has focused on understanding adolescent and emerging adults’ romantic relationships and their impact on functioning and has been funded by multi-year research grants from the National Institutes of Health.
Even while serving for 10 years as head of the psychology department, Welsh remained research active. She is passionate about research mentoring of undergraduate and graduate students. Her mentees have had successful careers and received elite postdoctoral fellowships and national awards. In recognition of her research accomplishments, Welsh has received numerous awards from UT Knoxville, including most recently a Chancellor’s Professorship, the 2023 College of Arts and Sciences College Marshal, and the 2023 Extraordinary Service to the University Award.