Master's Student Wins Distinguished Award
Congratulations to Ivo Gyurovski, the 2011 Recipient of the Arts & Sciences Distinguished Thesis Award in the Social Sciences. Ivo’s thesis was chosen as the best work from all the graduate programs in the social sciences at William & Mary.
Ivo’s thesis involved applying a cognitive theory to answer the social psychological question of how stereotypes are learned in our society. He conducted four studies (each with over 50 participants), and completed the programming, data collection and data analysis for all four studies – all in 1 year! Ivo’s project is novel in that it showed that racial stereotypes are formed differently for majority and minority racial groups. He was also able to demonstrate that these associations were learned differently for individuals with distinct personality traits. This work thus contributes importantly to our understanding of stereotype formation.
Ivo’s successful thesis is a reflection of his overall success in William & Mary’s graduate program. Ivo has worked in multiple research labs and all the professors and staff of the department have gotten to know him well. Everyone agrees - Ivo is intelligent, hard-working, and a pleasure to be around.
In his short time at W&M, Ivo has been extremely productive. He was recently a co-author on a published manuscript in a social psychological journal and has also co-authored five additional manuscripts with Professor Cheryl Dickter that are currently under review at other empirical journals. In addition, Ivo has presented 5 posters at national conferences in two years. He has also been successful at securing grants to support his research and to travel to conferences.
Ivo will continue to be successful in his Ph.D. program. After receiving a large number of offers from some of the strongest social neuroscience programs in the country, Ivo has decided to pursue his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. Although we will miss him greatly, we are excited to follow his research career and we have no doubt that he will represent William & Mary well in the future.
