Dr. Daryl Van Tongeren of the Hope College psychology faculty has received recognition as a Fellow by both the Midwestern Psychological Association (MPA) and the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR).
To be named an MPA Fellow is the highest honor that the association can bestow on a member. Selection requires evidence of significant contributions to the discipline of psychology and/or service to the MPA in terms of scholarship, productivity, leadership and visibility. Fellows are selected by a committee including the MPA’s president-elect, current president and past-president after having been nominated. Van Tongeren is one of 19 new Fellows this year.
ISSR Fellows represent the upper tier of membership in the society, which also admits associate members. The Fellows are first nominated by an existing Fellow, with selections made by the society’s Membership and Executive committees.
Van Tongeren is an associate professor of psychology at Hope, where he has taught since 2012.
He has published more than 100 journal articles and academic book chapters. He has received multiple grants for his research from the John Templeton Foundation as well as from the college.
In 2016, the Association for Psychological Science named him a Rising Star, a recognition most often bestowed on scholars at institutions with graduate-level programs. Hope named him a Towsley Research Scholar in 2015, and he received the college’s Social Sciences Young Investigators Award in 2014.
Van Tongeren’s research focuses on the social motivation for meaning and its relation to virtues and morality. Specifically, he and his students adopt a social-cognitive approach to study meaning in life, religion and virtues, such as forgiveness and humility.
He regularly involves students as collaborative researchers in his work, both part-time during the school year and full-time during the summer. Several Hope students are co-authors on his publications, and students he mentored in research have received regional awards for excellence from the Midwestern Chapter of Psi Chi – The International Honor Society in Psychology.
Prior to coming to Hope, Van Tongeren was a post-doctoral fellow at Virginia Commonwealth University for a year. He completed his undergraduate degree at Colorado Christian University in 2004, his master’s degree at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs in 2006 and his doctorate at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2011.
The Midwestern Psychological Association has more than 2,500 members from universities, colleges, hospitals, clinics, school systems, business and industry, government and private practice. The MPA’s purpose is to promote the advancement of psychological science by conducting an annual meeting at which papers, posters and symposia addressing psychological research may be presented. The association’s 91st annual meeting will be held on April 11-13 in Chicago, Ill. More than 3,300 people attended the event last year.
The International Society for Science and Religion was established in 2002 to promote education through inter-disciplinary learning and research in the fields of science and religion, conducted in an international and multi-faith context. The society has approximately 200 members from nations and regions including South Korea, India, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, as well as from Europe and the United States.