Two award-winning faculty join award-winning community psychology program
The Department of Psychology’s Community Psychology Training Program was named the field’s Outstanding Program at the Society for Community Research and Action’s Biennial Conference in Miami in 2013. This fall, two new faculty, Victoria Scott, Ph.D. and Andrew Case, Ph.D., join the Department as core faculty in the community psychology training program. At this year’s Biennial Conference, held in Lowell, MA, both Dr. Scott and Dr. Case were honored with major national awards.
Dr. Victoria Scott was presented the Society for Community Research and Action (SCRA) 2015 Early Career Award, in honor of “her commitment to developing and promoting the field of community psychology and her commitment to SCRA as an organization.” Her contributions include improving the capacity and performance of non-profit organizations and health and human service programs. Moreover, she has been a leader in community psychology practice, including helping establish a community psychology practice journal and co-editing a volume of the Global Journal of Community Psychology Practice on community psychology competencies.
Dr. Scott was also lead editor, along with Susan Wolfe, Ph.D., of the first book ever to delineate the range of competencies in community psychology practice, including their conceptual underpinnings and definitions, guidelines, and applications. Her book, Community Psychology: Foundations for Practice, received the SCRA Don Klein Publication Award to Advance Community Psychology Practice, which was established “to encourage and acknowledge excellence in promoting the field and practice of community psychology through publications with strong dissemination potential across disciplinary lines.”
Dr. Scott earned her Ph.D. in Clinical-Community Psychology and, concurrently, her M.B.A. in Management from the University of South Carolina. She has been serving as the Administrative Director of the Society for Community Research and Action (SCRA), Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Science at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, and the Director of Research and Evaluation in the Office of Continuous Professional Development and Strategic Affairs at the USC School of Medicine-Palmetto Health Continuing Medical Education Organization.
Dr. Andrew Case was this year’s recipient of the Society for Community Research and Action Emory L. Cowen Dissertation Award for the Promotion of Wellness, awarded to “the best dissertation identified on a topic relevant to positive well-being and the prevention of dysfunction.” He was honored for his dissertation, More Than Meets the Eye: Exploring a Black Cultural Center as a Counterspace for African American College Students.
This follows a previous award received by Dr. Case from the American Orthopsychiatric Association in March at the 28th Annual Research and Policy Conference on Child, Adolescent, and Young Adult Behavioral Health in Tampa. Dr. Case received the American Orthopsychiatric Association’s Vera Paster Award, which “recognizes an outstanding graduate student or a post-doctoral resident or fellow in a mental health discipline for exemplary work in research and/or public service that promises to generate or apply knowledge that may contribute to the advancement or empowerment of people of color.”
Dr. Andrew Case received his doctorate in Clinical and Community Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, completed a predoctoral fellowship in prevention and community research at The Consultation Center at Yale University, and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Duke Global Health Institute at Duke University.
For more information, see: http://www.scra27.org/members1/member-awards/