David Penn, a psychology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will receive a $25,000 Elizabeth Hurlock Beckman Award for inspiring a former student to make a difference in his community.
Penn is among 10 professors from universities across the country to receive the award, which will be presented in Atlanta on Nov. 9.
Penn and David Roberts, a 2008 UNC Ph.D. graduate, developed a group therapy treatment to help schizophrenia patients learn to interact in social situations. Roberts is now an assistant professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio.
Roberts was doing a clinical rotation at John Umstead Hospital in Butner when he discovered that schizophrenia patients responded positively to socially awkward situations being portrayed on television. He and Penn developed a treatment manual and original videos called Social Cognition and Interaction Training (SCIT) that have since been translated into multiple languages. They have trained 400 clinicians around the world on how to use SCIT.
Read a story about Penn and Roberts: http://college.unc.edu/2013/10/18/beckman/
College of Arts and Sciences contact: Kim Spurr, (919) 962-4093, spurrk@email.unc.edu