Faculty Awards | Department of Psychology
October 23, 2014

Faculty Awards

Dr. Rex Wright (bottom left) has received an honorary doctorate from the University of Geneva.

Dr. Shelley Riggs has been named a Fellow of the American Psychological Association Society of Family Psychology (Division 43).

Dr. Thomas Parsons has been awarded Fellow status in the National Academy of Neuropsychology.

Dr. Richard Rogers

The Miranda rights and warnings -- the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in court, the right to an attorney, and so on -- are simple and easy to understand, right?

Not necessarily, says Richard Rogers, Regents Professor of psychology.

Rogers has studied the Miranda rights and their use across the country for more than a decade. Over that time, Rogers has found that some of the warnings used to inform defendants of their rights may instead confuse them, especially juveniles.

"There are so many different versions of it with even some of them written at a college or post-college level," says Rogers. "Thousands of defendants give up their rights with a poor understanding of what those rights are, and often, profoundly mistaken beliefs."

His research and discovery prompted the American Bar Association to call for clear and concise Miranda language for juveniles across the country. His latest work, Mirandized Statements, a book by Rogers and Eric Drogin, a legal scholar and forensic psychologist at the Harvard Medical School, offers valuable tools to help defense attorneys and prosecutors alike build the strongest cases possible and to help the judges weigh the arguments about whether to suppress a Mirandized confession.

Because of his work, Rogers has received the UNT Foundation Eminent Faculty Award.

Dr. Mark Vosvick

Vosvick is the director for UNT's Center for Psychosocial Health Research and co-director of the LGBT Studies Program at UNT.

He played a key role in the acquisition of the archives of the Resource Center Dallas that trace 60 years of the history of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender social movements in the North Texas region.

The collection includes documents, letters and articles as well as artifacts like a T-shirt from the 1979 National March in Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. Acquiring the collection after years of negotiating was significant, Vosvick says, because they will help scholars study how the experience of the LGBT community was different in the south than it was in the east or west.

His role in acquiring the collection fell outside a traditional faculty role, he says, but preserving that source material was important.

"I think that inspires folks to think about the role of faculty outside of traditional scholarship." Vosvick says. "We were able to make valuable materials available for the next couple generations of scholars."

He served as chair of the UNT Faculty Senate from 2012 to 2014 and as vice chair from 2010-2012. In that time he sought to strengthen the senate's voice by encouraging senators to embrace their roles as representatives and actively seek input from all their constituents. As part of the senate, he led the formation of the Committee on the Status of LGBT Faculty.

Because of his work, Vosvick has received the UNT Foundation Faculty Leadership Award, the UNT Community Award (Presidential Excellence Award), and the President's Council University Service Award.