Dear Members of the Regional Faculty Advisor Award Committee:

     The Herbert H. Lehman College, City University of New York, Chapter of Psi Chi nominates our Faculty Advisor, Vincent Prohaska, Ph.D., for a Regional Faculty Advisor Award. Dr. Prohaska has been our faculty advisor since 1991. During these years he has proven himself a valuable resource for our Psi Chi Chapter and an important contributor to psychology in general.

Contributions to our Chapter
     As our chapter advisor, Dr. Prohaska always encourages us to strive for excellence. He encourages us to be autonomous, but he is always there to address our concerns, questions and inevitable problems. Although he also is the psychology department chair, his door is always open to his students and chapter members. When we encounter difficulties, he guides us to think about possible alternatives and develop our own solutions, rather than simply providing answers.
     Under Dr. Prohaska's supervision, our chapter has consistently grown larger and more active. Last year, we celebrated the chapter's 30th anniversary by inducting what we believe was our largest group of new members ever, 45. This semester, we inducted 41 new members. Dr. Prohaska was instrumental in helping us establish and expand our volunteer tutoring program, now in its 5th year. As department chair, he also supported our chapter by giving us a room equipped with computers and printers, as well as a refrigerator and microwave oven. This room has greatly enhanced both our chapter's academic and social activities. He also guides our post-secondary academic pursuits by his regular workshops on GRE preparation and graduate programs.

Contributions to Psychology
     Dr. Prohaska became the chair of Lehman College's Psychology Department in 1995, a position he still holds. In April 1999 he co-chaired a Psychology Department Chairs Discussion: "Between a Rock and a Hard Place" at the annual meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association. He also served as a member of the American Psychological Association Division 2 (Society for the Teaching of Psychology) Instructional Research Award Task Force in 1998 and 1999. Currently he is the chair of that Task Force.
     As an active researcher in memory and cognitive processes, Dr. Prohaska has a grant from the National Institutes of Mental Health to study procrastination. His most recent publications are: Prohaska, V., Morrill, P. B., Atiles, I., & Perez, A. (in press) Academic procrastination by non-traditional students, The Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, and, Prohaska, V., Brown, N. R., & Belli, R. F. (1998), Forward telescoping: The question matters, Memory, 6(4), 455-465, also reprinted as a chapter in D.B. Wright & G.D. Gaskell (Eds.), Surveying Memory Processes. His co-authors Iraida Atiles and Alfredo Perez were undergraduate students. He has served as a reviewer for the Journal of Research in Personality, Memory, and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Contributions to undergraduate education in Psychology
     Dr. Prohaska's qualities as a teacher were acknowledged in 1997, when he was awarded Lehman College's Excellence in Teaching Award. He is very active in advancing undergraduate research. He chaired the selection committee for the 9tth (1997) and 10th (1998) Greater New York Conference on Social Research. This past November, he brought the 11th Greater New York Conference on Psychological Research to Lehman College and served as chair of the conference committee. This conference focuses on student research and allows students to interact with other students and professionals within the New York metropolitan area.
     Many students have completed research projects under Dr. Prohaska' 5 direction and presented them at local and national conferences. He sponsored one student presentation at the 9th (1997) Greater New York Conference on Social Research, three at the 10th (1998), and four at the 11th (1999). Over the last three years, he sponsored or co-authored six additional conference presentations with his students. The most recent were: Perez, A., Morrill, P. B., and Prohaska, V. (1999, April) Academic procrastination among seven ethnic groups, a poster presented at EPA and Yaya, D. (1999, April) An unchecked threat: Medical procrastination-Differences between low and high procrastinators, a presentation at the Psi Chi session at EPA that received a Psi Chi Regional Research Award. Diana Yaya also presented this research at APA and received a Psi Chi National Research Award.

Contributions to Psi Chi
     Dr. Prohaska attended two Psi Chi National Miniconventions held in New York (August 1995) and San Francisco (August1998). At the New York Miniconvention, he chaired a workshop on Recognizing Faculty Excellence. He was a discussant for the Vitality and Programming workshop at the San Francisco Miniconvention. On August, 1999, he participated in a Psi Chi symposium at APA on Graduate School Admissions and Survival. Presently, he is a member of the Psi Chi Eastern Regional Steering Committee. He served as a reviewer for the 1996 Psi Chi Journal of Student Research and for the Psi Chi/Allyn & Bacon Psychology Awards.
     Through these accomplishments, Dr. Prohaska certainly lives up to the Psi Chi creed to
encourage, stimulate, and maintain excellence in scholarship of the individual members of all fields, particularly in psychology, and to advance the science of psychology. He has been a guiding light, not only to members of our chapter, but also to students enrolled in his classes, working as his research assistants, or doing any research in the psychology department. In his interactions with students, he continually demonstrates pastoral patience and parental understanding. He also serves as our personal cheering section. Yet Dr. Prohaska always maintains an air of professionalism and high standards. For all the accomplishments we have discussed, we believe that Dr. Prohaska deserves a Regional Faculty Advisor Award.

On behalf of the Lehman College Chapter,

Quailan Pantin
Vice-President