Dr. Jeff Elison Joins Adams State Psychology Department

Toni Steffens
The Paw Print

Adams State College has welcomed a new psychology professor, Dr. Jeff Elison, for the 2011 Spring Semester. Dr. Elison is happy to be teaching in Alamosa and excited to support his students in research projects.
Dr. Jeff Elison describes his welcome to Adams State College and the local community as the “easiest entry into an environment I’ve ever had.” He also feels the students have been great.
Before coming to work at ASC he worked for five years at the Southern Utah University where he conducted research, mainly exploring self conscience emotions, and taught classes. In the year before coming to Alamosa, Dr. Elison worked in research through Purdue University in Indiana looking at military families and their experiences.
After spending a year in Indiana, Dr. Elison was glad to get back to Colorado where he had lived previously for more than 20 years. He is eager to take advantage of all of the local outdoor activities available throughout the San Luis Valley. He had visited the area nearly 20 years ago when he spent time at the Great Sand Dunes and Penitente Canyon. Now he is glad to be back in a small town in the Colorado mountains.
The great location at ASC is not the only advantage Dr. Elison sees for students; he also believes the students are very fortunate for the undergraduate research focus of the college. He encourages any interested students to take advantage of those opportunities. He said that in the five different schools he has been in as a student or faculty member, the students did not get the same attention that they do at ASC where he says, “they want us to teach, and do a good job teaching.”
At SUU he supported many students in their research projects and, in addition to the awards he received, his students won 17 awards for their work during his five years at the school. Students researched topics such as humiliation and violence, compassion for those who were humiliated, shame coping, and perfectionism.
Dr. Elison has found that his research can be applied in many areas of life including his own relationship with students and  his teaching style. He said that self conscience emotions are social and they come up in every relationship and in every combination of family, such as parenting and relationships with children. For teachers, self conscience emotions can come up in their classroom in how they respond to student questions with respect or shame.
He developed a scale that looks at people’s coping styles with shame. The scale, which is used clinically, is now being translated into its tenth language. It can also be used for research in other disciplines such as education or family research.
For students interested in psychological research at ASC, Elison suggests they contact him. He has not started any projects at ASC but says that a “rewarding part of the job for me is undergraduate research.” He is willing to work on all kinds of research and enjoys mentoring student research.