Carleton’s Psychology Department is turning 60!

To acknowledge this momentous occasion, the department will be hosting a series of events over the weekend of October 4th to 6th, 2013. The festivities will include an opening cocktail reception, past graduate and faculty speakers, lab tours, graduate student poster presentations, a banquet, and a closing day Fun Run/Walk to raise funds for a 60th Anniversary Scholarship.

Visit the 60th Anniversary Celebration webpage for more information and registration: http://www.carleton.ca/psychology/60th-anniversary/

The Department of Psychology recently held a career event for undergraduate students.  Exploring Careers in Clinical and Counselling Psychology involved a panel of experts considering questions such as: How can a degree help you to prepare for a career in psychological services or related areas? What resources and supports are available? What can you be doing now to gain experience? During the session, students had the opportunity to hear stories, receive suggestions, and ask questions from the following professionals:

Video

Carleton University Art Gallery (CUAG) invites you to a community conversation on issues of young adults and substance use and abuse in Ottawa. Join researchers, professors, frontline workers, and students in a discussion of the psychology of addiction and links with mental health, new trends in substance abuse in Ottawa, support systems on campus, and city-wide strategies for prevention and education.

This discussion is organized in conjunction with Live Through This: Photographs by Tony Fouhse. It will be moderated by Fiona Wright, CUAG’s Education and Community Outreach Manager, with a special introduction by Tony Fouhse.

Admission is free and everyone is welcome! See below for information on discount parking.

Participants:

Jesse Auguste is an Honours undergraduate psychology student, minoring in Neuroscience. His upcoming thesis will concentrate on addiction, supervised by Dr. John Weekes. He works on the Carleton University campus at the Health and Counseling Office, helping to prepare presentations and resources on substance abuse for students. He also works as a youth facilitator for the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, where he facilitates focus groups and prepares presentations for youth across Ottawa, and as a Child/Youth Worker for the City of Ottawa.

Dr. Kim Hellemans is an Instructor II in the Department of Neuroscience at Carleton University. She received her Master’s and Ph.D. from Queen’s University, where her research focused on understanding the biological basis of drug addiction. She went on to complete post-doctoral positions at Cambridge University (2004-06) and University of British Columbia (2006-08) prior to taking a position at Carleton University in 2008. She has won the Capital Educators Award (2010), the Carleton University New Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award (2011), the Faculty of Science Teaching Award (2012) and most recently, a Teaching Achievement Award (2013). Outside of her academic life, she is a strong supporter of women’s issues; she has previously sat on the Board of Directors for the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology, and was Vice-President of the Board of Directors for Amethyst, a women’s addiction treatment centre in Ottawa from 2008-2012.

Terry-Lynne Marko graduated from the University of Western Ontario in 1984 with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. She has worked at Ottawa Public Health since 2001, most recently with the Injury Prevention & Substance Misuse team. Within this team, she works with many individuals, families, and community groups and partners. In one project, she worked with more than 30 community partners to look at the issue of marijuana and youth. She was the author and project coordinator for the “Why Drive High?” marijuana and driving social marketing campaign, which targeted high school and post-secondary students, funded by Health Canada’s Community Initiative fund. Presently she is working to mobilize Ottawa’s post-secondary campuses and selected community partners around the issue of binge drinking.

Tyler Pirie is a Research and Policy Analyst at the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse (CCSA). He is a Carleton alumni and joined CCSA in 2011 after graduating from the Schulich School of Medicine, where he obtained a M.Sc. in epidemiology and biostatistics. Prior to working for CCSA, Tyler worked at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Carleton University, and Statistics Canada. Tyler is currently involved in projects that explore new and emerging substance use patterns and trends, the utilization of substance use treatment services in Canada, and the efficacy of brief interventions to reduce the non-medical use of psychoactive substances.

Discount parking:

CUAG is located in the St. Patrick’s Building. See CUAG’s website for a map of the gallery’s location and parking. http://cuag.carleton.ca/index.php/visiting/directions/
Please take advantage of our special $4.00 (flat fee) parking rate. You must purchase a hangtag from CUAG for your car’s rear-view mirror.
From 6:30 – 7:00, you can drive to the roundabout in front of the tunnel entrance near Leeds House residence. CUAG staff will be standing just inside the tunnel entrance and can sell you a pass.\
Next, find a parking spot in the “Pay and Display” visitors’ section of Lot 6, labelled “P6” on the map.

If you are a Psychology undergrad major, minor, graduate student, staff or faculty member, please forward a clear and original design to CUpsychologo@gmail.com. Alternatively, you are welcome to submit sketches and drawings to the Office of the Chair (B552 Loeb). The deadline for submissions is Friday, March 22 at 4:30pm.

Why participate? Excellent question! Besides making a valuable and lasting contribution to the department and potentially having your work in a prominent position, you will have an opportunity to earn one of several prizes. For example, a new iPad mini will be awarded to the originator of the top design, as determined by our design committee. We look forward to viewing the results of your creativity. Please direct questions to CUpsychologo@gmail.com. Thanks for your interest, participation, and creativity.

Deadline: March 22^nd, 2013 at 4:30 p.m.

URL for more information: carleton.ca/psychology

JJ Levine 2012

Carleton University’s English Department is set to host an important and relevant event on the binary structure of gender.  The event is titled ‘Gender Failure’, and will feature a performance by two prominent queer-identified artists, including Ivan Coyote, who was Carleton’s writer-in-residence for 2007-2008.

“Our goal with Gender Failure is to mix narrative and music to create a conversation that is never the same show twice,” explains Coyote.  “We hope to entertain, first, and then get people thinking and questioning the gender binary. Is it working for them? Where does it pinch? Is it largely constructed by us, and how, and why, and how are we complicit, or resisting it?”

Born and raised in Whitehorse, Coyote is an award winning artist who believes in the power of sharing our stories and experiences with one another.  Working in a variety of mediums, she has authored a variety of short stories and one novel, has released four short films, and is an acclaimed live storyteller.

Coyote is celebrated as a live performer whose collaboration with musicians intricately weaves music and storytelling to inspire a sincere, diverse emotional response and understanding from her audience.

Coyote’s skill to relate to her audience is intrinsically connected to her profound curiosity in the lives of others.  In 2007, while serving as Carleton’s writer in residence, Coyote taught classes on memoir writing to senior citizens.  It was these classes, and the enthralled response from her students that helped Coyote to realize her ‘true calling’ – encouraging elders to document their lives.

“While I was at Carleton I really cemented my love of working with seniors. I taught three memoir writing classes of seniors, and I am still in touch with some of them to this day.”

Coyote’s other core focus is a pursuit to limit discrimination.  She has participated in multiple anti-bullying awareness campaigns, has released a short story collection for queer youth called One in Every Crowd, and was featured in Dan Savage’s essay collection It Gets Better.

Watch Coyote discuss an Ottawa experience

Coyote’s love of teaching and creative writing will be on display at Gender Failure, where she will be collaborating with prominent singer-songwriter and creative writer Rae Spoon.

Based out of Montreal, Spoon is a transgendered musician who has transcended the typical boundaries associated with the concept of music genre.  Spoon has travelled the world performing original songs while simultaneously transitioning from a country artist to an award winning, electronic music ace.  Spoon’s first book, First Spring Grass Fire, has just been released by Arsenal Pulp Press.  It is a collection of stories that, amongst other themes, illustrates the evolution of queer Alberta.

Gender Failure will challenge the concept of gender binarism – the societal construct that posits gender as two distinct, unbending roles. On Thursday, November 22^nd, Spoon and Coyote will use their captivating artistic talents to highlight the consequences of this unnecessary rigidity.

Funded by the FASS Endowment (Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences), Department of English, Sexuality Studies (IIS), Department of Law and Legal Studies, Centre for Initiatives in Education, Department of Psychology, and Equity Services

Thursday, November 22, 7:30pm
Kailash Mital Theatre, Southam Hall, Carleton University
This is a free public performance

Visit Carleton University’s Department of Psychology

Samuel Kalinowsky presents a cheque to Simon Hill

Simon Hill, a second year MA student in Psychology, recently received an award of $1000 from The Scottish Rite Charitable Foundation of Canada. The award recognizes promising young researchers who are studying intellectual impairments or “puzzles of the mind” especially as it affects children and also individuals with Alzheimer’s disease.  The award was presented by Samuel Kalinowsky, a 33^rd degree Freemason and Member of the Board for the Foundation.

”We are proud to be associated with students such as Simon, who sacrifice much to expand the frontiers of knowledge,” said Kalinowsky.

Hill is entering his second year of graduate studies, studying brain mechanisms associated with autism in a high functioning young adult sample. He is looking for signs of atypical cerebral laterality (ambiguous handedness, bilateral cerebral lateralization for language, abnormal interhemispheric interactions) and attempting to link these signs to adaptive autistic traits such as systematizing (looking for patterns in complex visual stimuli) as well as negative traits (such as social communication problems). This is a follow-up and extension of work that his supervisor and Associate Professor, Shelly Parlow, conducted previously with autistic children which found they were much less likely to be right-handed than other children, especially when asked to carry out unfamiliar and/or bimanual (two-hand) actions.

In accepting his Award, Simon stated ”As the prevalence rates of autism increase, I feel it is more important that we understand exactly what autism is in order to assist both autistic individuals and their families in coping with the everyday struggles they endure. This is something that I am very passionate about….”

Hill’s scholarship acts as a reminder that there are many existing external financial scholarships available to Carleton students.

From left: Anne Bowker, Samuel Kalinowsky, Simon Hill, Shelly Parlow

The Scottish Rite Charitable Foundation(SRCF) is the charitable arm of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry of Canada, which has a membership totaling about 20,000 members. Since its inception in 1964, the SRCF has devoted its charitable efforts to supporting research into ‘Puzzles of the Mind’, such as Alzheimer’s, Dyslexia, Autism,Parkinson’s , etc., through Major Research Grants, to the provision of Graduate Bursaries and to the establishment of Learning Centers for Dyslexic Children. Details on these Programs can be found on the SRCF Website: http:\\www.srcf.ca