2015 Distinguished Faculty Award for Excellence in Research: Liz Vera, PhD
This annual award seeks to recognize, encourage, and reward outstanding scholarship within the School of Education of Loyola University Chicago. The Faculty Awards committee is pleased to award the 2015 School of Education Distinguished Faculty Award for Excellence in Research to Dr. Liz Vera, faculty member in the Counseling Psychology Program.
Dr. Vera is a Professor in the School of Education. Her research has had a substantial and sustained impact on the field of counseling psychology with particular emphasis in the areas of social justice; ethnic identity development; multicultural competence; Latino mental health; and prevention, resiliency, and subjective well-being in urban youth development.
Dr. Vera is the author/editor of four books, 30 chapters in edited books, and forty-three published peer-reviewed articles. She has been, and continues to be, the lead researcher and author in the field bringing social justice research to the area of counseling psychology. In particular, her seminal work in 2003 with Suzanne Speight entitled: Multicultural competencies, social justice and counseling psychology: Expanding our roles published in The Counseling Psychologist became the catalyst for much of the subsequent scholarship within the field. Her edited volume entitled: Handbook of Prevention in Counseling Psychology (2013) is a seminal text that spotlights this intersection of social justice and counseling.
Dr. Vera has been a co-principal investigator on a CPELL grant since 2007. In particular, Dr. Vera created a parent needs assessment. This research-based needs assessment, and the subsequent research-driven parent programming that Dr. Vera also created and currently facilitates has reached over 5,000 language minority parents in the past seven years within the greater Chicagoland area.
Dr. Vera’s research has earned her the distinction of the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Psychological Association, Division 17 Prevention Section. She is a prolific researcher, author, editor and contributor to the field. Dr. Vera’s research has had a direct impact on subsequent scholarship as well as the lives of countless parents and students across the country