Professor Costanzo Honored
With Society's Teaching Award

Professor of Psychology Mark Costanzo has been honored with the 2008 Outstanding Teaching and Mentoring Award from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI), an international association of psychologists and others interested in the application of social science to public policy.
The award selection committee noted Costanzo's "deep commitment to mentoring" and "the high regard in which he is held by students and colleagues."
The award, conferred annually to a teacher/mentor from a program or department that is undergraduate-only, recognizes outstanding teaching in areas related to the psychological study of social issues. To be eligible, an individual must have made substantial contributions to students in the psychological study of social issues, have held his or her doctoral degree for at least 10 years.
Costanzo, who says he was "thrilled to receive the award," says that one of the benefits of being at CMC is "the opportunity to work with talented undergraduates both in the classroom and on individual research projects."
Costanzo's main area of research is psychology and law, a topic on which he also teaches a seminar. His specific research interests include police interrogations and false confessions, the death penalty, mediation and dispute resolution, nonverbal communication, persuasion, and coercion.
Costanzo earned his doctorate from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1986 and joined the CMC faculty in 1989. He is the author of Psychology Applied to Law (Wadsworth, 2004), and Just Revenge: Costs and Consequences of the Death Penalty (St. Martin's Press, 1997), and co-editor (with CMC Associate Professor of Psychology Dan Krauss and Kathy Pezdek) of Expert Psychological Testimony for the Courts (Erlbaum, 2007).