FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 14, 2015, 4:00 p.m. CDT
Contact Jason Hogue, Peru State College Marketing and Communications, 402.872.2429
Crete, Nebraska – Peru State College faculty members Dr. Darrin Coe, Dr. Kelli Gardner and Dr. Jim Nevitt
took 15 students majoring in psychology to the 2015 Nebraska Psychological Society
Undergraduate Conference. The annual conference was held at Doane College in Crete,
Nebraska.
Gardner writes, “NPS holds this conference at a different college or university every
November, and it provides a small, friendly environment for students to get experiencing
delivering both oral and poster presentations.”
Two Peru State College students presented at the conference. Devin Edds is a senior
psychology major from Farragut, Iowa. Paige Meyer is a senior psychology and criminal
justice major from Elmwood, Nebraska.
Edds developed a poster titled "The Dark Side of Conscientiousness." In this poster,
Edds integrated published research about highly conscientious people. Although conscientiousness
is generally considered a positive characteristic, some highly conscientious people
exhibit perfectionism, which is associated with negative outcomes. Next semester,
Edds will be collecting data to help better understand the well being of conscientious
people with perfectionist tendencies.
Meyer presented a poster called "Attitudes of Students at Universities." She was interested
in how the experience of taking a gender studies course might change students' beliefs
about gender roles and endorsement of feminist values.
Meyer found professors from other area colleges and universities who are teaching
gender studies courses and got their permission to measure the attitudes of their students
at the beginning of the gender studies course and again at the end. Paige will be
analyzing her data and writing up her results in the spring.
Dr. Nevitt writes, “The students’ posters showcased the work of Peru State psychology
students to the Nebraska psychology community. I am glad we can recognize student
work in this way.”
Nevitt adds, “A good time was had by all. We had an extremely interesting keynote
speaker during our lunch. Dr. Anne Schutte spoke on how environmental factors play
into spatial working memory and executive function.”
Schutte’s presentation was entitled "Let's Take a Walk: The Influence of Natural Environments
on Cognitive Functioning.” She is an Associate Professor of Psychology and works
at the Center for Brain Biology and Behavior at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
The psychology faculty at Peru State College first began taking students to the NPS
Undergraduate Conference in 2011.
Devin Edds with with the poster she presented that the conference.
Paige Meyer with the poster she presented at the conference.
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For more information, visit www.peru.edu or call 1-800-742-4412.
About Peru State College: Peru State’s “Campus of a Thousand Oaks,” an arboretum, is nestled in historic southeast Nebraska. The state’s first college, Peru State offers a unique mix of innovative online and traditional classroom undergraduate and graduate programs, including online graduate degrees in education and organizational management. It is a college of choice fostering excellence and student achievement through engagement in a culture that promotes inquiry, discovery and innovation.