Yale Bulletin and Calendar

April 20, 2007|Volume 35, Number 26

Marvin Chun

Psychology professor Marvin Chun is appointed the new master of Berkeley College

Marvin Chun, professor of psychology, has been appointed as the next master of Berkeley College, announced President Richard C. Levin.

Chun will begin his five-year term on July 1. His wife, Woo-kyoung Ahn, who is also a professor of psychology, will serve as associate master at the residential college.

A cognitive neuroscientist, Chun teaches in Yale's Department of Psychology and also in the Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program and the Cognitive Science Program. He holds a B.A. from Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea, and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Techology, and received postdoctoral training at Harvard University. He and Ahn were assistant professors at Yale 1996-1999, moved to Vanderbilt University in 1999 as associate professors, and returned to Yale in 2003 as full professors.

Chun's research is in human cognition, especially the analysis of processes at the interface of attention, perception and memory. His lab employs neuroimaging and behavioral techniques to study how people perceive and remember visual information. In 2002, he was awarded the American Psychological Association's Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology in the area of cognition and learning. In 2006, he received the Troland Research Award from the National Academy of Sciences, often considered the most prestigious early-career honor in the field that can be earned by an experimental psychologist.

In March of this year, Chun received the DeVane Award for Teaching and Scholarship, the oldest undergraduate teaching prize in Yale College, awarded by the undergraduate members of Phi Beta Kappa. The presentation of the award began with the words "Marvin Chun is the man!" and praised the psychologist for the clarity of his teaching, the excellence of his explanations and demonstrations, and his devotion to his students -- as well as for his "extended discourse, with Power Point slides, on why you should not worry if you got a C on the midterm (or in the class for that matter)."

Ahn, whose work is in the area of concepts and causal reasoning, is known to many undergraduates through her work as director of undergraduate studies in psychology, "a position that has no doubt prepared her well for the associate mastership," noted Levin in his letter to the Berkeley College community announcing the appointments.

Joining Chun and Ahn as members of the Berkeley community will be their children, Allison, age 7, and Nathan, age 5.

In his letter, Levin also expressed his "warmest appreciation" to Norma Thompson and Charles Hill, who have been serving as interim master and associate master of Berkeley College for the past year. This was the second time that Thompson, senior lecturer in the humanities, and Hill, Distinguished Fellow in International Security Studies, have assumed the interim posts, noted Levin. "Their success the first time around led them to be the natural candidates to undertake the job again -- and again they have invested themselves completely in the Berkeley community and repeated their success," he wrote.

Levin also offered his "deepest thanks" to John Rogers, master of Berkeley College, who has been on leave for the past year, and to Cornelia Pearsall, associate master. Levin noted that the couple "for five years made Berkeley their home, and a home away from home for hundreds of Berkeleyites. ... John and Cornelia vied to bring sustainable food to Berkeley, managed to bring a range of A-list guests to Berkeley for master's teas, including Joan Didion, Stephen King and Meryl Streep, and immersed themselves completely in Berkeley life. Their warmth, enthusiasm and energy will be missed, but Berkeleyites take comfort from the fact that they will remain close members of the larger Berkeley and Yale communities."

The president also thanked the members of the search committee: Michael McBride, the Richard M. Colgate Professor of Chemistry (chair); Kathrin Lassila, editor of the Yale Alumni Magazine; Larry Manley, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor and director of undergraduate studies in English; Ann Valentine, assistant professor of chemistry; and undergraduates Christa Anderson '07, Laura Edwards '08, Eric Feng '09, Stanley Seiden '10 and Jessica Stephens '09.

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