Brain Pursuits Bring Professor Back

January 9, 2008

Kiley Brown
kbbrown@tulane.edu

Undergraduate students often switch their majors to something they think would interest them more. When Julie Alvarez made that change in her sophomore year at Tulane, she changed her life. Alvarez is now a professor of practice in psychology at Tulane.

Alvarez was initially a classical studies major at Tulane. She planned to attend law school or graduate school in classical studies but changed her major to psychology after taking Beth Wee's "Brain and Behavior" course her sophomore year. She then took upper-level courses in psychology, later becoming a research assistant in Gary Dohanich's psychobiology laboratory.

Now Alvarez occupies an office down the hall from both professors in the psychology department.

"I fell in love with the brain and the study of relationships between how our behaviors are emergent properties of what is happening in our nervous system," says Alvarez.

Alvarez continued her studies at Emory University, receiving her PhD in clinical psychology. She was supposed to complete her postdoctoral fellowship in clinical neuropsychology at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in New Orleans, but because the hospital closed after Hurricane Katrina, Alvarez relocated to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston. After completion of her fellowship, she got the opportunity to return home to teach psychology full time.

"While I enjoy research and clinical work, my first love is teaching," Alvarez says. "My primary goal for any course I teach is to make the experience pleasurable and engaging for my students in order to maximize their learning potential," she adds.

Alvarez's main research interest is the intersection between cognition and emotion — how abnormal behaviors and mental illnesses affect our thinking. She investigates how neurological dysfunction resulting from combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder leads to cognitive impairments, particularly attention problems.

Alvarez's love of teaching is directly related to her passion for learning and experience as an undergraduate, when she learned the significance of relationship-building between a teacher and a student.

"Tulane emphasizes the importance of small student-to-teacher ratios. The personal attention I received during my undergraduate education taught me that a teacher should develop a relationship with students and this relationship supports and drives the learning process," says Alvarez.

In the spring semester, Alvarez will be teaching "Psychology 100: Introductory Psychology," "Psychological Testing and Measurement" and a graduate course, "Psychoeducational Assessment II."