Chairperson
Office: Curtis Hall 202
Phone: 716-839-8257
Email: demer@daemen.edu
Dr. Denise Emer is an Associate Professor in the Daemen College Psychology Department and current psychology department chairperson. Dr. Emer holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Psychology from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Dr. Emer began her graduate study in the area of developmental and cognitive psychology, but became fascinated with clinical/forensic areas of the field in her final year of graduate school, and was fortunate to access mentors who were willing to provide the training she needed to reorient her study and reinvent herself professionally. During her final graduate year, and first 3 years of tenure-track teaching at St. Bonaventure University, Dr. Emer completed an externship at the Buffalo Psychiatric Center working with severe and persistent mentally ill clients. She also received training in forensic psychology under the mentorship of Dr. Joseph Davis, a California based forensic psychologist who teaches at California State University and has been a leader in the field for over 25 years.
Dr. Emer’s research has been eclectic, focusing on various areas of clinical, forensic, and health psychology, including, the efficacy of group therapy approaches for people with Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder, the relationship between perfectionism and performance, Obsessive Relational Intrusion and Stalking behaviors in college populations, and jealousy and infidelity in college students. Dr. Emer has also previously conducted research on factors that impact potential jurors’ decisions about insanity pleas and related mental health factors that mitigate criminal responsibility.
Dr. Emer is enthusiastic about teaching undergraduates about her discipline and helping them to understand how the science of psychology can contribute to a better life for everyone regardless of an individual’s college major, interests, or career aspirations. Dr. Emer regularly teaches courses in Forensic Psychology, Health Psychology, and the Psychology of Mental Illness (a.k.a., “Abnormal Psychology”), as well as courses in the required undergraduate research sequence for psychology majors (General Research Methods, Topics in Research Methodology: Personality and Health, Junior Seminar in Psychology: Crimes that Make You Go Hmm, and Senior Thesis in Psychology).
Dr. Emer has had the pleasure of mentoring several undergraduate student research projects, both as part of the required thesis for psychology majors at Daemen College, and also as Independent Study endeavors. Several of these projects have been submitted for publication and/or presentation at national research conferences.
In her spare time, Dr. Emer is an avid musician, whose passion is singing blues, funk, soul, and classic rock. She also enjoys Zumba fitness, dancing (esp. Latin, Hip Hop, and Swing), weight training, and movies. Her 3 children, Nick, Sam, and Zoe and her boyfriend John keep her very busy outside of the classroom, along with her dog Sylas, and her many cats.
Dr. Emer's Courses
- PSY 223, Forensic Psychology
- PSY 229, Health Psychology
- PSY 408, Psychology of Mental Illness
- PSY 353, Research Methods in Psychology
- PSY 354, Topics in Research, Health and Personality Psychology
- PSY 335, Junior Seminar in Psychology (Crimes That Make You Go Hmmm)
- PSY 444 Senior Thesis in Psychology
Current Research Projects
This year I will be continuing research in 3 topic areas of interest: Obsessive Relational Intrusion (a precursor to stalking that involves failure to respect personal boundaries in relationships), Jealousy and Infidelity in Romantic Relationships (specifically, gender differences and how those differences interact with the type of infidelity perpetrated and one ability to take the perspective of one’s partner), and interventions for test anxiety in college students.
If you are interested in registering for an Independent Study with regard to any of the above research projects please review the following requirements before submitting an application:
Getting involved with research as an undergraduate is a great way to learn more about psychology and get hands-on experience. The skills you learn doing research will assist you in the workplace and/or graduate school. Undergraduate research assistants will work closely with me and possibly other students on a research project. Your involvement may include the collection of data from human subjects, data entry and scoring, preparation of materials, completing literature searches, and statistical analysis (if you have experience with the statistical software and type of analyses being conducted).
Requirements
- Minimum 2.5 GPA
- Juniors and Senior preferred, but well-prepared Sophomores will also be considered (Psychology major preferred but not required)
- Sufficient availability each week to perform required duties (amount of time required varies with number of credits you register for)
- Strong interest in the areas of research you are becoming involved in
Psychology in The News
Books I Recommend
- Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry is Medicating a Nation
- Gilbert Welch, Overdiagnosed - Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health
- Simon Baron-Cohen , The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty
Faculty
Office: Curtis Hall 201
Phone: 716-839-8256
Email: jhanna@daemen.edu
I am a psycholinguist with a background in cognitive science, cognitive psychology, and linguistics. After my graduate training, I was a postdoctoral fellow at SUNY Stony Brook,working on ways to study comprehension during conversational interaction using head-mounted eye tracking technology. During my career, I have set up two eye tracking laboratories, one for use in experiments that use computer-based displays and one for use in experiments where participants are in face-to-face,conversational settings.
I have taught a number of standard courses within the Psychology major, including Introduction to Psychological Science, Cognitive Psychology, and Methods in Cognitive Psychology. I have also developed an upper level Seminar in Psycholinguistics, as well an introductory level seminar called Psychological Mythbusters: What do we believe, why do we believe it, and is it true? The course I most love to teach is Introduction to Psychological Science; I find it particularly rewarding to introduce students to the science of psychology, whether they will end up a major or not, and to explore with them the theories and data that speak to how and why we think and behave the way we do.
My research focuses on the sources of information that contribute to moment-by-moment language comprehension, including linguistic factors (such as syntax and semantics), as well as factors that come from the context of being involved in a conversation(such as the common ground between interlocutors, their spatial perspectives,or their eye gaze). I have also conducted eyetracking reading experiments that looked at how prior discourse context affects within-sentence ambiguity resolution.
Educational Background
- Bachelor of Arts, Vassar College, 1991 (Cognitive Science)
- Master of Arts, University Rochester, 1999 (Brain and Cognitive Sciences)
- Doctor of Philosophy, University Rochester, 2001 (Brain and Cognitive Sciences)
- NIH National Research Service Award Postdoctoral Fellow, SUNY Stony Brook, 2001-2004
Selected Articles
- Hanna, J.E., Brennan, S.E., & Savietta, K.J. (Under revision). Costs and benefits of using a speaker's eye gaze in face-to-face communication.Accepted with revisions at Cognitive Science.
- Brown-Schmidt, S. & Hanna, J.E. (2011).Talking in another person's shoes: Incremental perspective-taking in language processing. Dialog and Discourse, 2, 11-33.
- Brennan, S.E. & Hanna, J.E. (2009).Partner-specific adaptation in dialogue. Topics in Cognitive Science(Special Issue on Joint Action), 1, 274-291.
- Hanna, J.E. & Brennan, S.E. (2007). Speakers' eye gaze disambiguates referring expressions early during face-to-face conversation.Journal of Memory and Language, 57, 596-616.
- Hanna, J.E. & Tanenhaus, M.K. (2004). Pragmatic effects on reference resolution in a collaborative task: evidence from eye movements. Cognitive Science, 28, 105-115.
- Hanna, J.E., Tanenhaus, M.K., & Trueswell, J.C. (2003). The effects of common ground and perspective on domains of referential interpretation. Journal Of Memory and Language, 49, 43-61.
Funding
- NSF HCC-Small:Establishing and breaking conceptual pacts with dialog partners. Co-PI on collaborative grant with D. Byron (joint review by Information and Intelligent Systems/Human Centered Computing and Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences/Perception, Action, and Cognition). 10/2007-9/2010; No cost extension through 9/2011; NSF approved extensions through 3/2013; Supplement Awarded to J.E. Hanna 6/2012.
- NIH National Research Service Award Postdoctoral Fellow, SUNY Stony Brook, 2001-2004. Title: The use of perspective during referential communication. Sponsor: Dr. Susan E.Brennan.
I am a behavioral neuroscientist with a specialization in neuropsychopharmacology. I earned my Bachelor of Science in Health Sciences from the University of Minnesota at Rochester, where I began working with the zebrafish animal model. From there I continued working with zebrafish and earned my master’s and Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology, with an emphasis in Brain and Behavioral Psychology from the University of Southern Mississippi. There, my focus was on studying the environmental and pharmacological influences on stress-related behavior in zebrafish. Before coming to Daemen University, I completed my postdoctoral training in the Carver College of Medicine at the University of Iowa, working with mouse models to study neurodegenerative diseases.
My primary research interests are in studying the individual differences in the susceptibility or resiliency to affective (e.g., depressive) disorders. To study this, I use a zebrafish animal model to examine the neurobiological basis of stress behaviors via behavior analysis and physiological assays. The most rewarding thing about research for me, is the ability to develop unique questions and carry out experiments to answer previously unanswered questions. I really enjoy the opportunity to share my love of research with young scholars, and to teach students tools which they can use to develop & answer their own research questions.
In addition to working in the lab, I also really enjoy in-class work with students. I have taught several courses in psychology, ranging from Introductory Psychology through Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences and Health Psychology. My instruction style is interactive, and I always strive to provide multiple viewpoints to a particular topic or subject matter.
In my free time, I enjoy running outside, and embroidering (on canvasses & cardstock mainly!). I also love trying out new foods and cooking new recipes.
Selected Publications
- Khan, K. M., Bierlein-De La Rosa, G., Biggerstaff, N., Pushpavapathi, S. G., Mason, S., Dailey, M., Marcinkiewcz, C. A. Adolescent ethanol drinking promotes hyperalgesia, neuroinflammation and serotonergic deficits in mice that persist into adulthood. Manuscript in revisions. Available on BioRxiv: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.11.29.469930
- Khan, K. M., Collier, A. D., Meshalkina, D. A., Kysil, E. V., Khatsko, S. L., Kolesnikova, T., Morzherin, Y. Y., Warnick, J. E., Kalueff, A. V., Echevarria, D. J. (2017). Zebrafish models in neuropsychopharmacology and CNS drug discovery. British Journal of Pharmacology, 174, 1925-1944.
- Khan, K. M., Echevarria, D. J. (2017). Feeling Fishy: Trait Differences in Zebrafish (Danio rerio). In J. Vonk & A. Weiss (Eds.), Personality in Non-human Animals (pp. 111-127). New York, NY: Springer.
Office: Curtis Hall 205
Phone: 716-566-7854
Email: slupien@daemen.edu
Murray, S. L., Lupien, S. P., & Seery, M. D. (2012). Resilience in the face of romantic rejection: The automatic impulse to trust. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 845-854.
Lupien, S. P., Seery, M. D., & Almonte, J. L. (2012). Unstable high self-esteem and the eliciting conditions of self-doubt. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 762-765.
Shimizu, M., Seery, M. D., Weisbuch, M., Lupien, S. P. (2011). Trait social anxiety and physiological activation: Cardiovascular threat during social interaction. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37, 94-106.
Lupien, S. P., Seery, M. D., Almonte, J. L., (2010). Discrepant and congruent high self-esteem: Behavioral self-handicapping as a preemptive defensive strategy. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 1105-1108..
Additional Information
Psychology Today Blog – The Truth About Ourselves
Interview with Psych2go – How to Overcome Your Failures and Build Your Self-Esteem
Office: Curtis Hall 206
Phone: 716-839-8347
Email: dpoepsel@daemen.edu
Dr. Dennis Poepsel is an Assistant Professor in the Daemen College Psychology Department. Dr. Poepsel holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from William Jewell College, a Master of Science in Psychology from the University of Central Missouri, and a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Arkansas. During his graduate training at the University of Arkansas, Dr. Poepsel was under the mentorship of Dr. David A. Schroeder, a leader in the field of prosocial behavior for over 40 years. Before coming to Daemen, Dr. Poepsel held temporary, one-year Assistant Professor positions at Truman State University and Centenary College of Louisiana.
Dr. Poepsel’s research specialization is in Social Psychology. In particular, his greatest interests lie in studying prosocial/helping behavior. The form this research has taken over the years has varied while retaining a primary question: what can be done to motivate others to do what is best for everyone rather than what is best just for the self? In graduate school, Dr. Poepsel’s focus was set on understanding why it is difficult to get groups to cooperate with each other, and under what circumstances can cooperation be promoted. This led him to begin research on the influence of perceived justice during intergroup interactions and how perceiving that one’s group has been treated fairly by another group (or by a larger system) can lead to more cooperative behaviors. With this focus on fairness, Dr. Poepsel is currently interested in applying his findings to more real-world settings, particularly potential residents’ decisions regarding urban environments.
Dr. Poepsel’s primary interest lies in teaching undergraduates about psychology and introducing them to what this science has to offer. Whether it's as a student in one of his classes, or as a research assistant, Dr. Poepsel is committed to opening up students’ eyes to how they function (for good or bad!) within a complex, social world. Dr. Poepsel regularly teaches Introduction to Psychology and Social Psychology. He has also taught Experimental Psychology, Applied Social Psychology, and History and Systems of Psychology. Dr. Poepsel is excited to bring his enthusiasm to the classrooms at Daemen College when he teaches courses such as the Psychology of Prosocial Behavior.
Over the years, the most satisfying aspect of Dr. Poepsel’s career has been mentoring students in both his and their own research projects. Consistently these projects have been submitted for publication and/or presentation at national research conferences.
When Dr. Poepsel finds some free-time, he enjoys running, weight training, finding new restaurants to try out, enjoying a good movie, and spending time with his dog Priya.
Email: kzelazny@daemen.edu
Kerry Zelazny is a full-time instructor in the Daemen University Psychological Sciences Department. Kerry holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University at Buffalo (UB) as well as a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Central Florida. He also holds a Master of Arts in Psychology from UB, where he focused his training in the Clinical Psychology area's graduate program. While enrolled in graduate school, Kerry conducted research, coursework and training in the areas of mental illness, psychological assessment, and psychotherapy. He worked for several years at UB in the Personality, Psychopathology and Psychometrics Lab under Dr. Leonard Simms, as well as in the Depression Research and Treatment Lab under Dr. John Roberts.
Kerry's research has focused on personality traits and their relationship with different disorders, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, anxiety disorders, and depressive disorders. In particular, his research has examined modern classification schemes that help us understand the symptoms of these disorders and how problems like PTSD and personality disorders are best defined.
While at UB, Kerry also trained for several years in both the measurement and treatment of mental health problems. This included work at ECMC's Child Psychiatric Unit (conducting group therapy with children), the VA Hospital's Geriatric Evaluation and Management Unit (performing assessment and behavioral treatment for Veterans with dementia), and at UB's Psychological Services Center (providing supervised assessment and psychotherapy to community members and college students). Some of the therapies Kerry has received training in include CBT, ACT, DBT, Assertiveness Training, and Couple's Therapy. Kerry also specialized in the detection and measurement of pathological personality traits, which was also a focus of his research.
Since graduate school, Kerry has focused his career on teaching. His teaching method includes a heavy emphasis on drawing together scientific research with practical, everyday experiences. One of the things Kerry loves about teaching psychology classes is that much of the material is fun to learn, and much of it relates to both every-day-life and career experiences outside of the classroom. He particularly enjoys helping students find their own personal connections with the course material – a goal that he believes can help students perform better in the class and to also use what they've learned long after graduating from Daemen. While at Daemen, Kerry has taught Introduction to Psychological Science, Psychology of Mental Illness, and Counseling Psychology. Other courses Kerry has taught (at other area schools like UB) include Developmental Psychology, Psychopathology of Development, Social Psychology, Personality Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Anxiety Disorders, Mood Disorders, Personality Disorders, and Advanced Research Methods.
In his free time, Kerry likes to read science fiction (like the Wheel of Time), hike and camp, play board games, and hang out with his family and friends. He is a proud father (of his daughter Ezri), Marine Veteran, and Mario Kart champion.