Our department is made up of faculty who are truly world class. Last year more than 150 scholarly papers were published by members of our department. In addition, we have had six books released recently, including Dr. Suzanne Segerstrom’s book on optimism, Breaking Murphy’s Law: How Optimists Get What They Want from Life-and Pessimists Can Too.

We have a number of our faculty who are serving as associate editors of major journals and/or are sitting on national grant review panels. Our external grant funding has increased over six-fold since 1999 to $4.3 million last year.

It is an exciting time to be in this department and to see the research products that involve both undergraduate and graduate students working in very active faculty research labs. We have programs of research that focus on school bullying, ADHD, alcohol and substance abuse, memory disorders, immune function, malingering, aging, orofacial pains, minority mental health, and personality disorders, to name but a few of the interests of our faculty. In short, our department is playing an active role in responding to very real needs of the Commonwealth, and all of our faculty actively are pursuing their research interests.