Chair’s Letter
January 22, 2025
Dear Alumni and Friends of UF Psychology,
This morning, I am at home enjoying the quiet of a rare—very rare—“snow day,” in Gainesville. While we did not, in fact, have any snow, it was an opportunity to share some highlights of events and happenings. Our newsletter provides a compilation of achievements and activities as we wrapped up the previous academic year, as well as some more recent highlights.
This Fall, we welcomed two new faculty members: Nicholas Coles (Social) and Yuki Shigemoto (Counseling). Effective at the start of the Fall 2024 semester, Roberto Abreu (Counseling) and Nicole Gravina (Behavior Analysis) were tenured and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor, and Lori Knackstedt (Behavioral & Cognitive Neuroscience) was promoted to Professor (Full). We continue to build new areas of research as our early and mid-career faculty add depth to their research and teaching portfolios, continuing the success of psychology at UF.
I am especially excited to share that our UF Online Psychology Bachelor’s program was ranked as the #3 Best Online Program by US News & World Report; this is the fourth consecutive year that we have been in the top 5! This achievement speaks to the hard work, excellence, and innovation of our faculty who are teaching online courses, as well as the support that UF provides in assisting faculty in building online courses that integrate new technologies and best practices. Our residential undergraduate program is also thriving, with nearly 2000 majors on campus.
Our Faculty not only excels in teaching but also contributes to UF’s research and dissemination mission (see Faculty & Staff Recognition, Faculty Spotlight for details on a few of these highlights):
- Psychology consistently ranked in Top 5 in CLAS for research funding
- 30 New External Funding Awards in 2023-24 to 20 different faculty members
- Since July 1, 2020, Psychology faculty have received $18M in research funds
- Tenure Track Faculty published 5 (Median) Peer-reviewed publications in 2023-2024.
- 45% of Non-tenure track faculty published at least one article
- Majority of faculty publications included graduate student co-authors; many include undergraduate co-authors
- 13 Faculty members received 15 National Awards
Their mentees also excel (Graduate Student & Postdoctoral Trainee Awards):
- 15 Graduate students received National Awards
- Several received UF and CLAS awards
- With the generous support of Alumni, graduate students received 91 awards to support travel to disseminate their work at conferences in 2023-24.
- We are on track to match this level of productivity this year!
We are especially proud of the achievements of our undergraduate scientists. Check out highlights from our Annual Undergraduate Research Forum as we prepare for our Spring 2025 event. These experiential opportunities are particularly important for the career and skill development of our undergraduate majors, and we are thrilled to see several hundred students engaging with these opportunities every semester!
We continue to appreciate the support of our Alumni and our Psychology Advisory Board in making the research forum, our annual awards, and many other educational and training opportunities possible for our undergraduate students and graduate programs.
As you take a look at the newsletter, you may see things you missed; I hope this gives you an opportunity to catch up on what we have been doing.
You can keep up on current activities, awards, and people in the news on our website and social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, and YouTube). Thank you for your support as we build the future of Psychology Science and continue our 90-year legacy of excellence!
With gratitude,
Julia Graber
Professor & Chair