SCRA Awards and Fellows
Here we highlight the extraordinary work of our members, both those recognized by SCRA and those who have won awards from the APA.
Congratulations to the 2018 SCRA Award Recipients!
Irma Serrano-García: Recipient of the 2018 SCRA Award for Distinguished Contributions to Theory and Research in Community Psychology
Irma Serrano-García is a leading contributor to theory and research in bicultural and bilingual community psychology in the Americas. Dr. Serrano-García has made substantive contributions in at least six specific areas of community psychology theory and research including international community psychology, empowerment, community intervention and research methods, education, psychology and public policy, and HIV-AIDS. Dr. Serrano-García has published about 21 co-authored and edited books, including her role as co-editor of the recently published second Handbook of Community Psychology. She established the International Conference of Community Psychology and hosted its inaugural meeting in San Juan in 2006. Her initial conceptual work created the foundation for the social-community psychology doctoral program at the University of Puerto Rico four decades ago. That work became a template for others seeking to initiate community psychology programs in Latin America and shaped the creation of programs in Venezuela and Argentina among others.
Christine Sadeler: Recipient of the 2018 SCRA Award for Distinguished Contributions to Practice in Community Psychology
Since its inception in 1995, Christiane Sadeler has been the Executive Director of the Waterloo Region Crime Prevention Council (WRCPC; Kitchener, Ontario, Canada), a unique partnership between local government and the community. She came to prevention work after years of working in human services with diverse populations in four different countries (Germany, England, New Zealand and now Canada). While working with children who had been sexually victimized she began her lifelong interest in prevention, and her degree-related research at Wilfrid Laurier University. Key was the realization that many had childhoods characterized by severe neglect and abuse, and often silence around these experiences of trauma. This led Ms. Sadeler to the belief that silence about challenging topics needs to be broken, and voices from the margin needed to be amplified. She feels fortunate to do this work on a rich soil where restorative justice is embraced and Community Psychology is increasingly understood and recognized
Nathan Todd: Recipient of the 2018 SCRA Early Career Award
Nathan Todd is an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research aims to understand why and how individuals and groups work together for social justice, and the multifaceted ways that religion and racial privilege are part of this process. In particular, he is interested in religious settings as mediating structures that may constrain or promote social justice engagement. Dr. Todd has a strong record of community psychology scholarship and is an active contributor to the field and to SCRA.
Dominique Thomas: Recipient of the 2018 SCRA Best Dissertation in a Topic Relevant to Community Psychology Award
Dominique Thomas is currently a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Georgia State and Associate Editor of The Community Psychologist. His dissertation research was a mixed methods study to advance understanding of campus racial climate, specifically for African-American students. He employed a sequential transformative strategy that included qualitative and quantitative phases. Items for the planned measure were developed from a series of interviews with African-American students. The resulting measure includes three subscales: Institutional Factors, Experiences and Perceptions, and Student Interracial Interactions that demonstrate internal validity, criterion-related validity, and incremental validity distinguishing the subscales from a measure of General Campus Climate. The dissertation was selected for recognition with this award because of the strong theoretical and empirical grounding, the careful methodology, attention to engagement with participants, large samples, innovation, and potential utility for advancing the field.
Dissertation Title:Black Scholars Matter: Development and validation of a campus racial climate measure for African-American college students
Dissertation Chair: Dr. Winnie Chan, Georgia State University
Michelle Stratton: Recipient of the 2018 SCRA Emory L. Cowen Award for the Promotion of Wellness
Michelle Stratton is in independent community psychology practice in northern California. Her dissertation is a sophisticated qualitative study of Rwandan and Congolese refugees in her home community of Manchester, New Hampshire. The project is the result of sustained engagement and inquiry into culturally-based sources of resilience, as well as consideration of how the ‘host’ culture can be more mindful of creating an environment that helps immigrants sustain, and not unreflectively assault, these sources of resilience. The dissertation exemplifies empowering and culturally sensitive methods to identify cultural resources and pathways for resilience that likely have important implications for trauma reduction and the promotion of well-being among refugees. The work exemplifies the core values of participatory collaboration between the researcher and the community, as well as respect for diversity and a strengths and wellness framework.
Dissertation Title: Culture, Resilience, and Adaptation: The Voices of Rwandan and Congolese Refugees
Dissertation Chair: Dr. Mary Watkins, Pacifica Graduate Institute
Bianca Guzmán: Recipient of the SCRA 2018 Ethnic Minority Mentorship Award
Bianca L. Guzmán is a highly recognized ecological community psychologist who has national expertise in the educational pipeline of K-20 students of color. She is currently the Director of Pathway Programs at Cal State LA, a new office she created on her campus to address the issues of preparing K-12 students for college. Dr. Guzmán has served as a fellow to the Massachusetts Institute for College and Career Readiness where she assisted in developing and implementing evaluation protocols for educational pathways that can impact the lifelong success of students. She is currently the President of the Society for the Psychology of Women (Division 35 of APA), Section 3- Latina Women-- where she continues to implement her knowledge around issues impacting young girls and women of color. In 1987 Guzmán founded a non-profit organization called Choices to promote health and education in Latinx communities. Through her social science research endeavors in the Choices program, Dr. Guzmán has mentored hundreds of students of color who have earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees. Dr. Guzmán has written numerous articles that have been published in peer reviewed journals, as book chapters and trade publications and she has also edited a book entitled “Latina Girls: Voices of Adolescent Health in the U.S.”
Congratulations to the 2018 SCRA Fellows!
Louis Brown, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
Judith Meyers, Children’s Fund of Connecticut
Maury Nation, Peabody College of Education and Human Development, Vanderbilt University
Stephanie Reich, University of California, Irvine
Barbara Yee, University of Hawaii at Manoa