Rick Cherwitz and Courtney Dillard

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Editor's note: Arete is an ancient Greek word for virtue, describing the quest for individual excellence. In this regular feature of On Campus, the University salutes its graduate students — whose considerable contributions to the academy and larger community are truly virtuious. These features will be framed and posted in the lobby of the Office of Graduate Studies, Main 101.

Name: Kathryn Guy
Hometown: Athens, Ga.
Program of Study: School Psychology (department of educational psychology)
Ph.D. Adviser: Margaret Semrud-Clikeman
Education: B.A., psychology and French (double major) from Hope College in Holland, Mich. (1996); M.A., academic educational psychology from UT Austin (2000)

For example, she has proposed a study that examines the differences between children identified as learning disabled and children not classified as learning disabled, but who have difficulty performing in the average range on academic subjects. By working to clarify the definition of learning disabilities, Guy aids schools in better identifying and teaching children with them.

Throughout her graduate career, Guy has been involved in a number of research teams exploring such diverse issues as nonverbal learning disabilities and the peer relations of middle school students. The intervention element of this research has focused on teaching social competence skills to those children who often have social difficulties.

Examples of skills taught include recognizing emotions, expressing emotions appropriately and understanding nonverbal emotional cues. While much of this research is explicitly tied to the community through the public school system, Guy also finds this research to be informative of her teaching pursuits at UT Austin.

Currently, she is a teaching assistant of children's literature and has worked in the past in UT's Child and Family Laboratory.

Finally, Guy has been the recipient of numerous awards during her graduate career. Most notably, she has been granted the Joseph L. Henderson and Katherine D. Henderson Scholarship and the Bascombe Royall and Frances Fallon Fuller Fellowship.

Her work currently is supported by a University of Texas Continuing Fellowship. Her recent publications can be found in The Clinical Neuropsychologist (1999), Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology (1999) and Brain and Language (2000).

As she begins work on her dissertation, she intends to integrate her previous research and teaching experiences to develop a longitudinal study investigating learning disabilities and their identification within the educational system.

Her future goals include applying her research on learning disabilities as she works with parents, teachers and children in the public school system.

NOTE: Nominations (including self-nominations) for ARETE should be sent to Associate Dean Richard Cherwitz at spaj737@uts.cc.utexas.edu