Dr. E. Tory Higgins is the winner of the 2017 SPSP Ambady Award for Mentoring Excellence. This award recognizes Tory’s career-long commitment to fostering the professional and intellectual development of students and early career researchers. Tory has advised more than 60 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, including 35 former graduate students who are affiliated with academic institutions around the world and are prominent psychologists in their own right. However, it is not simply the volume of his mentees that makes Tory such a remarkable mentor; it is the manner in which he values each of his students. As one former student put it, Tory is “a model of how to treat others.” Tory’s mentoring style is marked by enthusiasm, support, and seemingly endless positivity. In summing up Tory’s mentoring style, another former student notes that “Tory will always put you and your best interests before all other considerations, and he will always be excited about your ideas and will infect you with enthusiasm.” Perhaps most illustrative of Tory’s mentoring success is the intergenerational network of Higgins lab family members – a productive network of scholars that is continually expanding Tory’s legacy. A former student describes the connection between lab members as so complete as to blur the lines between generations of scholars. All, it seems, share an appreciation of how lucky they are to have been mentored by Tory.
The Ambady Award for Mentoring Excellence is a teaching and mentoring award that honors a personality or social psychologist who has demonstrated a career-long commitment to fostering the professional and intellectual development of students and early career researchers.This award is intended to recognize exceptional and selfless efforts to shape our field through mentoring activities that promote research integrity, impact, and productivity, and also a record of serving as an accessible and supportive advisor. The others to receive the award are Phoebe Ellsworth, Mark Zanna, and Tom Gilovich.
