Westminster professor is Educator of the Year

STAFF REPORT

NEW WILMINGTON, Pa. — Dr. Alan Gittis, Westminster College professor and chair of the Department of Psychology, was selected Educator of the Year by the Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience.

The honor was given in recognition of his efforts to foster cooperative activities between FUN and the Society for Neuroscience, the international scientific society for the interdisciplinary field of neuroscience.

Gittis is a past president of FUN and contributed the lead article to the organization’s first online Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education in 2002. He was instrumental in designing many of the organization’s programs at the annual meetings of the Society for Neuroscience, including the introduction of an undergraduate research poster session.

Most recently, he obtained a travel award for undergraduate students funded by the Society for Neuroscience.

Gittis serves on a FUN steering committee that oversees chapters of Nu Rho Psi, the undergraduate honor society in neuroscience, and as FUN’s representative on the Society’s Public Education and Communication Committee.

He has been employed at Westminster since 1976 and earned an undergraduate degree from Temple University and a master’s and Ph.D. from The Ohio State University.