Psych doctoral alum wins D.C. Spriestersbach Dissertation Prize

Monday, July 11, 2016

Effie Kapnoula
Effie Kapnoula

Dr. Efthymia (Effie) Kapnoula has won the D.C. Spriestersbach Dissertation Prize for 2016 in the Social Sciences. The award recognizes the excellence of her doctoral dissertation, entitled, “Individual Differences in Speech Perception Sources, Functions, and Consequences of Phoneme Categorization Gradiency.”

The winner of the Spriestersbach Dissertation Prize receives $2,500 and becomes the University of Iowa’s nominee in the national competition for the 2016 Council of Graduate Schools/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award. Kapnoula will also be honored at the James F. Jakobsen Memorial Graduate Research Conference Award Ceremony and Reception on March 25, 2017.

Kapnoula’s dissertation was supervised by Professor Bob McMurray. This award adds to a long list of Spriestersbach Dissertation Prize winners in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, part of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.

The University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences offers about 70 majors across the humanities; fine, performing and literary arts; natural and mathematical sciences; social and behavioral sciences; and communication disciplines. About 15,000 undergraduate and nearly 2,000 graduate students study each year in the college’s 37 departments, led by faculty at the forefront of teaching and research in their disciplines. The college teaches all Iowa undergraduates through the college's general education program, CLAS CORE. About 80 percent of all Iowa undergraduates begin their academic journey in CLAS. The college confers about 60 percent of the university's bachelor's degrees each academic year.