Academics and Research / Magazine Feature

DU professor receives Mentor Award in psychology

Professor emeritus Marshall Haith recently won the American Psychological Association’s Mentor Award for Developmental Psychology.

The award is given to educators whose PhD and postdoctoral students have achieved successful careers in psychology. Haith’s former students now hold teaching positions at Stanford, Boston College and the University of Michigan. One student is currently the vice provost of McGill University.

Haith will receive it in August at the association’s meeting in San Francisco.

“I have really enjoyed working with my students and seeing them develop their own careers,” Haith says.

Haith says that over the years, his students have steered him in research directions he never would have considered. For instance, he collaborated with a student who researched how children learn video games. Another student studied children as eyewitnesses in court testimonies.

Rob Roberts, director of DU’s psychology department, says Haith has had a powerful impact on the field of developmental psychology. Haith pioneered the study of infants’ visual perception by studying their eye movements.

“Marshall’s research laboratory resembled the classic mad scientist’s workshop,” Roberts says. “It was bustling with activity. He and his students used computer and video technologies to examine infant cognition.”

Though Haith has taken a step down from his instrumental role in research, he still comes to campus three days a week to edit papers for students. Haith taught at DU from 1972 until his retirement in 2000.

The Mentor Award marks his dedication to education and research.

“Numerous scientists throughout the world owe much of their careers to work with Marshall,” Roberts says. “He is one of the great research mentors in psychology.”

“The award means a lot to me,” Haith says. “It means there’s a tradition that’s going to continue through people that have worked with me.”

Tags:

Comments are closed.