Aileen Chang of the Department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology of UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School has won the 2014 Gale Morrison Award for Research in the School Setting. Chang won the inaugural occasion of the prize for her work “Exploration of an Empathy Intervention to Reduce Anger and Aggression.”
The Gale Morrison Award for Research in the School Setting represents an appreciation of the inherent complexities of learning to work as a school psychologist in the schools. At the core of working effectively in school settings, where children are developing academic and social competencies within the complex environments including classrooms and other school-situated social situations, is the emerging professional’s ability to practice patience with their learning process and tolerate the ambiguity within many of the situations they encounter. At the same time, with increased knowledge and experience comes the obligation to explore and document how we know that we have been effective in our practice. How do we know that our interventions are effective? How to we document that for others? It is success with these professional attitudes and practice that we celebrate with this award. Thus, the Gale Morrison Award for Research in the School Setting is given to a student who has conducted an evaluation of their work in the school setting that demonstrates a positive impact on students, parents, and/or teachers.
The award was originally developed to honor emeritus professor and twice interim dean Gale Morrison, and to pay tribute to her role as a leader and founder of the School Psychology emphasis at the Gevirtz School. Morrison, in turn, honored the school by offering to fund a cash prize associated with the award.