March 29, 2024

UMW Professor Receives Outstanding Faculty Award

Liss-Video-8University of Mary Washington Professor of Psychology Miriam Liss is the recipient of a prestigious 2015 Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education of Virginia (SCHEV). The awards are the commonwealth’s highest honor for faculty at Virginia’s public and private colleges and universities, recognizing superior accomplishments in teaching, research and public service. This year, 13 faculty members were selected from a highly competitive pool of candidates. In February, the recipients will attend a ceremony and luncheon in Richmond and also will be introduced on the floor of the General Assembly. Liss, who joined the UMW faculty in 2001, is a clinical psychologist and has conducted research on parenting, division of labor and work-family balance. The co-author of “Balancing the Big Stuff: Finding Happiness in Work, Family and Life,” Liss also has published articles about autism and developmental disorders, as well as sensory processing sensitivity, self-injurious behaviors, feminist identity and body image. She has developed a collaborative program between UMW and the New England Center for Children (NECC) where students can spend a semester at NECC outside of Boston, performing applied behavioral analysis in a school setting and taking classes for UMW elective credit. Her articles have been published in numerous journals including the Sex Roles, Psychology of Women Quarterly, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Journal of Personality and Individual Differences, and Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines. She also regularly presents at national conferences. Liss has been interviewed for her work on intensive and attachment parenting for the Washington Post, MSNBC.com and Live Science. Liss’s honors include election into Phi Beta Kappa and Psi Chi, where she was selected as the regional faculty advisor winner and supervised the chapter winning the National Chapter Award in 2006. She received the UMW Outstanding Young Faculty Member Award in 2005 and was a finalist in the SCHEV state award in 2006 and 2009. She also was named one of Princeton Review’s Best 300 Professors. Liss received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Wesleyan University, in addition to a doctorate and master’s degree in clinical psychology from the University of Connecticut. The General Assembly and Governor created the Outstanding Faculty Award program in 1986. Since the first awards in 1987, more than 300 Virginia faculty members have received this high honor. Professor of History Jeffrey McClurken was the 2014 recipient of the award.