Rebecca MacNair-Semands, senior associate director of the University’s Center for Counseling and Psychological Services, is the 2017 recipient of the Arthur Teicher Group Psychologist of the Year Award.
This honor, presented by the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Society of Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy (Division 49), honors a member whose “theory, research or practice has made some important contributions to the knowledge of group behavior.”
MacNair-Semands was recognized for her training of clinicians through an ethics curriculum she developed, for her publications that focused on two measures that she co-developed to assist group clinicians in selecting potential group members into group treatment and a measure that captures the longstanding mechanisms of change in small group treatment and for her service to APA.
According to nomination materials, MacNair-Semands recognized the importance of providing interns and doctoral students with a practice setting to learn about small group treatments, and as a result of her efforts, UNC Charlotte has one of the best counseling center programs in the country for teaching small group treatment.
The two measures she co-developed to assist group clinicians in their assessments have been translated in multiple languages and have been used in North and South America, Europe, the United Kingdom and Australia.