Jessica Cameron delivers the 2017 Outstanding Professor Award public talk on the topic of self-esteem
Arts celebrates excellence at outstanding professor talk
2017 award recipient gives public talk on the lay theory of self-esteem
Each year, the recipient of the Outstanding Professor award gives a public lecture on a topic of their choice relevant to their research program. This year the award recipient was Jessica Cameron [BA(Hons)/98], an associate professor of psychology, who gave her talk entitled Inferring worth from “high” and “low” self-esteem: Consequences and implications. Cameron received the award during Arts Celebrating Arts, the annual luncheon held as part of Arts Homecoming, in September 2017.
The Outstanding Professor award is given to a professor in the Faculty of Arts who has best demonstrated excellence in teaching, outstanding research, and who has an exemplary record of service. The citation for Cameron’s award stated, she “has yielded global recognition in the research areas of self-esteem, gender, and social relationships, winning the Rh Award for exceptional innovation, leadership, and promise in the social sciences, just one of many awards for an incredible research dossier.” Jeff Taylor, Dean, Faculty of Arts congratulated Cameron for her accomplishments in all three areas depicting her as “an excellent model for the Faculty of Arts benefitting the community, research, and students.”
Her talk gave an overview of self-esteem, trait labels and how, in North America, self-esteem may be equated with actual worth. She shared how the research has shown that “participants are using the self-esteem of a target to make assumptions about that target, not only labelling the traits of the person but also impacting the social judgements they make about that person such as liking the person, their preferred social distance to the person, and even predicting the person’s behaviour”. The talk was followed by a question and answer period and reception that provided attendees opportunities to engage directly with the research being done by Cameron and her collaborators.
Nominations for next year’s Outstanding Professor are due by April 30, 2018, the award information and nomination form can be found on the award webpage. The winner will be announced in May 2018, and will receive their award during Homecoming in September.