Jaine Strauss
Thomas Jefferson Award Citation
March 10, 2009

Outstanding teacher, creative and productive scholar, and superb contributor to the Macalester community, Jaine Strauss is the 2009 recipient of the Thomas Jefferson Award.

A native of Philadelphia, Jaine remained in the City of Brotherly Love to complete her undergraduate degree with honors in both English and psychology at Swarthmore College in 1980.   She then moved north to the University of Rochester for graduate work in clinical psychology and completed her Ph.D. in 1985.  She stayed in Rochester for two more years as a National Institute of Mental Health postdoctoral research fellow.

In the fall of 1987, she moved to Williamstown, Massachusetts to become a full-time member of the psychology faculty at Williams College.  Jaine joined the Macalester faculty in psychology in the fall of 1993, and she, her husband, Mitch, and their children, Jacob and Chloe, moved to the Twin Cities.  She was promoted to associate professor three years later and to her current position as Professor of Psychology in 2004.

Jaine is an astonishing teacher.  She routinely mesmerizes students across the range of the psychological curriculum from Introductory Psychology, through intermediate and advanced courses in her areas of specialty.  Her course “Distress, Dysfunction, and Disorder” (affectionately known as “3-D”) is a legend in the department. It would draw over 100 students each semester if it weren’t capped at 75.  That may sound like a large, impersonal lecture course, but by week three, Jaine knows every student’s name, where they grew up, and the combination of their high-school gym locker.  That may sound like an exaggeration, but anyone who knows Jaine knows that she has a miraculous ability to remember people’s names and tiny—but significant—biographical facts about their lives.  That, together with a dazzling wit and a clear, trenchant teaching style, makes her irresistible to students and colleagues alike.  This excellence in the classroom has not been overlooked.  Jaine was recognized by the Minnesota Psychological Association in 1999 when she received the Walter D. Mink award for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching and by Macalester in 2001 when she received the Excellence in Teaching Award.  Virtually all students give Jaine the highest possible rating on end-of-course evaluations.

Jaine’s research has focused on two psychological disorders: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and eating disorders.  She has published 22 articles on these topics, six with Macalester students as co-authors.  Jaine has also made 39 conference presentations, ten of which included Macalester students as co-authors.  In the 13 years between 1995 and 2008, 23 psychology majors completed their honors theses under Jaine’s supervision—an astonishing accomplishment that indicates both her attractiveness as a research supervisor and her devotion to helping students produce high-quality research.  In 1991, she was co-editor of a book on interdisciplinary approaches to studying the self, and she has published three book reviews.  For ten years, she was a consulting editor of the Psychology of Women Quarterly, and she continues to be an ad hoc reviewer for several journals in psychology.

Jaine sets the bar very high in terms of serving the Macalester community.  Since the fall of 1993, she has served on almost 40 committees including the Faculty Advisory Council and the Curriculum Committee, as well as three terms on the Faculty Personnel Committee that she chaired in 1999-2000.  She has been chair of the Psychology Department for a three-year term, was the acting director of the Center for Scholarship and Teaching in 2006-2007, and is currently the director of the program in community and global health.  In the wider community, Jaine has served on the Education and Training Committee of the Minnesota Psychological Association and is the current chair of that organization’s Paterson Award committee.  In these contexts, Jaine’s sagacity, diplomacy, and pure intelligence make for a powerful force toward progress.

It’s worth noting that despite Jaine’s extraordinary gifts, she is extremely—almost painfully—modest.  She does not enjoy having her talents pointed out to her.  Some in the Psychology Department (the non-clinicians) have taken it upon themselves to conduct a program of systematic-desensitization so that Jaine will experience less distress, dysfunction and disorder in award-type situations—just like this one.  You can be sure that she was hoping that this paragraph was going to be the last.  If she is still in the room at this point in the citation, then real progress has been made.

Finally, Jaine is a trusted colleague and warm friend to many of us at Macalester.  Ask anyone here who has met Jaine even briefly, and they will happily describe the ease with which one can feel her love for and friendship to the College and our community.  Thomas Jefferson once said, “Friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.”  He would be delighted to know that this award carrying his name is being given today to Jaine Strauss, a dazzling ray amongst us whose deep commitment to her students, passion for learning, and undying love for her academic community is truly our sunshine.