Dr. David Penn, a Professor of Clinical Psychology, is the recipient of the 2013 Elizabeth Hurlock Beckman Award.
This award recognizes educators who have inspired their former graduate students to create an organization which has demonstrably conferred a benefit on the community at large and/or to establish on a lasting basis a concept, procedure, or movement of comparable benefit to the community at large.
Dr. Penn received this award for his mentor-mentee relationship with former Clinical Psychology graduate student Dave Roberts. Dr. Roberts is now an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Health Science Center.
Dr. Penn encouraged Dr. Roberts to develop a new treatment approach based on social cognition, with video as one of the components. The result was Social Cognition and Interaction Training, or SCIT, a group therapy treatment that is designed to improve the social functioning skills of people with schizophrenia.
The treatment manual and videos have been translated into Mandarin, Cantonese, Portuguese, Spanish, Finnish, Hebrew, and Japanese. The duo have trained more than 400 clinicians internationally.
Dr. Roberts nominated Dr. Penn for the Beckman Award, stating that he “used his expertise to prop up, clarify, and connect my fledgling ideas.”