Each year, the Psychology Department gives out two awards, the Distinguished Senior in Psychology, and the Capstone Award. The Distinguished Senior in Psychology Award is given each year to the senior major who best represents the department’s ideal for outstanding scholarship, research and service, while the Senior Capstone Award is given each year to the senior major who completes the top senior capstone research project. The Capstone Award considers the scope of the senior capstone, the initiative of the major in completing it, and the public presentations that the senior makes (including our Psychology Research Symposium poster session).
At Awards Chapel in April, Yunan “Charles” Wu ’15 was announced to be the Distinguished Senior in Psychology. Charles came to Wabash from Fujian, China. During his time at Wabash, Charles worked with Dr. Gunther on a summer research project, Dr. Horton on an independent study project, and completed summer
Yunan “Charles” Wu ’15 presenting his summer research at Harvard University
internships at both Harvard and Stanford University. For his capstone project, Charles continued his summer research project at Stanford, studying how children interpret inferences in a sentence. Next year, Charles will begin his doctoral studies at Carnegie Mellon University in the area of auditory neuroscience, studying the neural mechanisms underlying how children and adults perceive speech sounds with Dr. Lori Holt.
In addition to his work in psychology, Charles is a double-major in German major and a math minor. He was also involved in the music department and has had several piano recitals in the past few years.
This year, Adam Boehm received the 2015 Capstone Award, for his project: The effects of pornography on male attention and outlook towards women. Adam is a Crawfordsville native and attended Crawfordsville High School. He is a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity, was a pitcher for the Wabash Baseball team, and was an active member of College Mentors for Kids.
Adam Boehm’s poster summarizing his capstone research project.
After Wabash, Adam plans to take a gap year before attending graduate school to pursue his PhD in either psychology or neuroscience. He would like to continue his research on how pornography affects the brain, with hopes of helping young adults and adolescents understand the dangers of using pornography.
