Psychology’s Hebl selected as 2004 Piper Professor

Psychology’s
Hebl selected as 2004 Piper Professor

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News staff

Mikki Hebl is one of 15 higher-education faculty members
in Texas selected to be a Piper Professor of 2004. She is
the 13th faculty member at Rice to receive this honor from
the Minni Stevens Piper Foundation.

Mikki Hebl

The Radoslav
Tsanoff Assistant Professor of Psychology, Hebl was chosen
for the award in recognition of superior teaching at the
college/university level.

She will receive
a $5,000 honorarium from the San Antonio-based nonprofit
foundation that was formed to support charitable, scientific
and educational endeavors in Texas. Oil businessman Randall
Gordon Piper and his wife, Minnie Stevens Piper, were the
foundation’s principal donors.

Hebl said she
was surprised to learn that two students had nominated her
for this award. “You never know whose lives you change
in the classroom,” she said, humbled by the students’
initiative to submit her name for this honor.

Hebl joined Rice’s
Department of Psychology in 1998 after receiving her Ph.D.
from Dartmouth College. She teaches courses on research
methods, social psychology, the psychology of gender and
industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology.

An applied social
psychologist, Hebl publishes in both mainstream social psychology
and I/O journals. Her research focuses on understanding
interactions between stigmatized and nonstigmatized individuals.
She documents how discrimination is manifested within social
interactions and organizations, and she examines how stigmatized
individuals and organizations can increase the targets’
acceptance in social interactions, entry into organizations
and general interactional or organizational experiences.

Over each of
the last six years — including this year — Hebl
has received a teaching award from Rice. Among these are
the George R. Brown Prize for Excellence in Teaching —
Rice’s most prestigious teaching award — voted
on by alumni who graduated two and five years ago.