Distinguished Scientific Contribution

The Division offers this award for distinguished theoretical or empirical contributions to lesbian, gay, or bisexual psychological issues. The winners of this award have made far-reaching and visionary contributions to the development of a science of LGBT psychology and have provided the science base for practice, education, and the development of public policy. Many of these award winners are pioneers who first asked affirmative research questions about the lives of LGBT people, their families, and their communities.

2007 winners

Beverly Greene - Dr. Greene is a professor of psychology at St. Johns University and holds a diplomate in clinical psychology from the American Board of Professional Psychology. Dr. Greene received her PhD in clinical psychology from Adelphi University, and has held several hospital positions where she focused on child and adolescent mental health - and she also was a school psychologist in a former life! Dr. Greene is a fellow in six divisions of APA, is a member of several editorial boards, serves on innumerable boards, committees, and organizations in which science is a key focus, and served as one of two founding editors of the Division 44 book series. She receives several awards a year for her pioneering efforts to integrate gender, sexual orientation, and race/ethnicity in psychology, and the scope of her work is remarkable. She writes about therapy, teaching, abnormal psychology, academe, ethics, couples/families/children, women, policy/law, racism, sexism, anti-semitism, heterosexism, and homophobia, all with an integrative focus that has given us new concepts and fresh language to understand the experiences of LGBT people of color. It is probably safe to say that there is not a single paragraph being written in contemporary feminist, LGBT, or multicultural psychology that does not cite Dr. Greene's work. In addition to her dozen books and numerous articles and chapters, Dr. Greene also is exceptionally generous in disseminating scientific knowledge through speaking, and she has hundreds presentations to her credit. Dr. Greene's work has had extraordinary impact, and we honor her for her groundbreaking scientific ideas and her outstanding commitment to translating and transmitting scientific knowledge to diverse audiences.

John De Cecco - Dr. De Cecco is well-known to most of us as the long-time editor of the Journal of Homosexuality. Dr. De Cecco received his PhD in history at the University of Pennsylvania, and went on to post-doctoral study at Michigan State University in Educational Psychology, where he later joined the faculty of that program. He left Michigan for the psychology department at SFSU in 1960, and was a member of the group that founded the program in Human Sexuality Studies, of which he served as director for 13 years in the period between 1978 and 1996. Dr. De Cecco has had an extraordinary scholarly career that includes 15 books and dozens of articles on sexuality, service on the editorial boards of most of the major journals in sexuality, and numerous awards, including, in 1997, having a day in San Francisco named "John Paul De Cecco Day." He has been the editor of the Journal of Homosexuality since 1978, and was one of the first academic journal editors at Haworth Press, the publisher that is a long-time friend of Division 44. This interdisciplinary journal has been an extremely important outlet for disseminating scientific knowledge in LGBT psychology, and for many years was the only such venue - in fact, it is probably fair to say that many scientists in this room probably began their publishing careers in this journal. It is an extraordinary mark of progress in scientific LGBT psychology that, 30 years later, there are now multiple outlets for our empirical work, and we honor Dr. De Cecco today for his vision, courage, and sustained leadership of the journal where much of it began.

2006 winner

Lisa M. Diamond - Dr. Diamond is Associate Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies at the University of Utah. She received her doctorate in Human Development from Cornell University in 1999. Dr. Diamond has been the recipient of numerous awards including an Emerging Leader Award from the APA Committee on Women in Psychology. The William T. Grant Foundation, the National Institutes of Mental Health, has funded her research and she is a past recipient of the Wayne F. Placek Small Grant award from the APF in 2000.

Past winners

  • 2005 Ilan H. Meyer
  • 2004 Maria Cecilia Zea
  • 2003 Perry N. Halkitis, Larry Kurdek
  • 2002 Letitia Ann Peplau
  • 2001 Ritch C. Savin-Williams
  • 2000 Anthony D’Augelli
  • 1999 Gregory Herek
  • 1998 Susan Cochran
  • 1997 no award
  • 1996 Charlotte Patterson
  • 1995 Vickie Mays
  • 1994 no award
  • 1993 Celia Kitzinger
  • 1992 Frederick Bozett
  • 1991 Esther Rothblum & Anthony D’Augelli
  • 1990 John Gonsiorek & John L. Martin
  • 1989 Gregory Herek

Nominations

Please send nominations for this award to the president-elect