University Park, Pa. – Pamela M. Cole, professor of psychology in the College of the Liberal Arts, is the recipient of the 2011 Howard B. Palmer Faculty Mentoring Award.
The award honors and recognizes outstanding achievement by a faculty member with at least five years of service who effectively guides junior faculty. Howard Palmer was the senior associate dean of The Graduate School from 1984 to 1991.
Cole, a member of the Department of Psychology since 1995, is recognized for mentoring junior faculty in the department and other departments at Penn State, particularly through her leadership role in the Child Study Center's Early Pathways to Competence research initiative. "In my experience," one junior faculty said, "it is rare to find such an accomplished scientist and academician who is willing to give so freely of her time to others, and for no other benefit or recognition except in the development of colleagues and the departments they serve."
Another noted that her "gentle, yet no-nonsense, mentoring approach is particularly effective for clearly conveying what needs to be done, while providing the support to make certain that it actually does get done."
A former senior staff fellow in the Laboratory of Developmental Psychology at the National Institute of Mental Health, Cole has presented numerous seminars on the NIMH grant application process for faculty members and graduate students.
She served as director of the Penn State Child Study Center from 2001 to 2003 and currently is director of the Integrated Research Training Program in Early Childhood Mental Health.