By gabe bradley
News Editor
University graduate student George Slavich has been honored by the American Psychological Association for excellence in teaching.
He received the McKeachie Graduate Student Teaching Excellence Award, the nation’s top honor for graduate teachers of psychology, during the APA’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C. this August.
Slavich, who plans to become a professor at a research university upon completion of his studies at the University, said research and teaching are inextricably linked for him.
“Your research can inform your teaching and your teaching can inform your research,” Slavich said. “I might be doing a lecture on depression and a student asks a really good question. It might be a question to which we don’t necessarily have an answer but that we can study in the lab.”
Research findings can then be integrated into teaching, he said.
Slavich, a Santa Clara, Calif., native, began his teaching career when he was a graduate at Stanford, which has a center for teaching and learning. The center offered a number of workshops and seminars of teaching.
“I went through quite a bit of those while I was at Stanford,” Slavich said. “That sort of helped me to conceptualize my own thoughts about teaching.”
Since 1996, he has taught more than 1,800 students in 19 different courses, according to his Web site.
In 2001, he founded the Stanford Undergraduate Psychology Conference. In 2002, he founded the Western Psychological Association Student Council.
Slavich researches depression and how it develops in adulthood. In particular, he studies the role of “life stress” and “cognitive vulnerability” in producing the disorder.
In order to be eligible for the award, Slavich was first nominated by Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford University professor emeritus of psychology, according to a University press release.
Slavich earned his bachelor’s degree at Stanford in 2000 and later completed a master’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in personality communication.
After his nomination, Slavich solicited three recommendation letters and compiled a teaching portfolio. The portfolio consisted of syllabi, lesson plans, teaching evaluation forms and honor theses for which he served as an adviser.
When deciding where he wanted to earn his doctorate, Slavich said Oregon was an easy choice. Slavich’s previous adviser at Stanford was working on research with Psychology professor Scott Monroe at the University of Oregon. Slavich acted as a liaison between the two.
“I ended up sort of being the middle man,” he said.
Over time, Slavich and Monroe worked closely together, which sealed Slavich’s decision to study at the University.
“It was kind of a natural decision since Scott’s interests closely matched mine,” Slavich said. “Oregon is known as one of the top clinical programs in the country, so that doesn’t hurt the decision.”
Slavich, who has earned a master’s degree in clinical psychology at the University, is almost finished with his doctorate.
“I’m now just working on my dissertation,” Slavich said. “I’m aiming to finish by June.”
Slavich said he is particularly honored to receive this award because teaching plays such an important role in his studies and his career.
“I care about it and I care about getting better at it,” Slavich said. “I put a lot of time and energy into it.”
Earlier this year, Slavich won a national award for a research paper he wrote.

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