Dr. Lindsey Root Luna of the Hope College psychology faculty has received the Regional Faculty Advisor Award for the Midwestern Region of Psi Chi – The International Honor Society in Psychology.
Root Luna was recognized for her many outstanding contributions to the honor society and as a role model for psychology students and Psi Chi advisors everywhere. She has been faculty advisor of Hope’s chapter of the honor society since 2014. A 2003 Hope graduate, she was a member of the chapter — and its president— as a student.
The award marks the second time within a month that Root Luna received recognition for her work with students. She was presented the college’s 53rd “Hope Outstanding Professor Educator” (H.O.P.E.) Award by the graduating Class of 2017 during Hope’s Commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 7.
Established in 1965, the college’s chapter of Psi Chi has approximately 50 members. The chapter facilitates the college’s Psychology Club, which Root Luna also advises, to schedule programming on behalf of all students at Hope who are interested in psychology, with activities typically including guest speakers, community-service opportunities, career-development workshops and social events.
The chapter itself has previously received recognition from Psi Chi. In 2016, the chapter won the society’s 2015-16 Kay Wilson Officer Team Leadership Award for demonstrating excellence in leadership and realizing the potential of Psi Chi to develop future leaders in psychology.
Root Luna is an assistant professor of psychology at Hope. She returned to the college as a faculty member in 2012 with a desire to engage intentionally in faith integration and grow her research program in virtues and emotion regulation.
Her teaching responsibilities include Introduction to Psychology, Research Methods in Psychology, Behavior Disorders, Perspectives on Personality, Advanced Research in Psychology, Clinical Psychology and Neuroscience Capstone.
Root Luna’s research focuses on emotion and emotion regulation, as well as cultivating virtues such as forgiveness, gratitude, humility and hope. She began studying forgiveness within a psychological framework when she was a student at Hope and her studies have continued beyond her years as a student. She continues to investigate how forgiveness impacts the body along with how embodying humility, gratitude and hope impact physiological functioning, in particular heart rate variability. She has had several articles published in refereed journals.
She conducts her research collaboratively with Hope students. Her students have received awards for the past three years from Psi Chi for their research at the Midwestern Psychological Association’s annual conference.
Prior to coming to Hope, Root Luna completed her pre-doctoral internship at Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services in Grand Rapids and maintains a private practice there one day per week. She was a faculty member at Ferris State University for three years before joining the Hope faculty.
She completed her master’s and doctorate in clinical psychology at the University of Miami in 2005 and 2009 respectively.
Psi Chi – the International Honor Society was founded in 1929 to encourage, stimulate and maintain excellence in scholarship, and advance the science of psychology. Psi Chi has chapters at about 1,100 senior colleges and universities in the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, Ireland and New Zealand. Since its founding, the honor society has registered more than 700,000 lifetime members.
The honor society’s chapters are grouped within six regions: Eastern, Midwestern, Rocky Mountain, Southeastern, Southwestern and Western. The Midwestern Region includes Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Ontario, Canada.