Psychology Department in 1957

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Dr. Aull (center) joined the faculty of Wagner's education department in 1950 to expand offerings in psychology.  She became chair of the psychology department when it was founded in 1956.  She had studied psychology in Berlin and training in psychoanalysis in Vienna before fleeing the Nazi regime to take up study of Gestalt at the New School for Social Research in New York City where she earned her PhD in 1954.  Her dissertation is entitled "Sentence completion testing: A descriptive analysis" and was supervised by Helen Block Lewis, a maverick in expanding psychoanalytic training.  Aull translation into English of Leo Szondi's "Experimental diagnostics of drives" was published in 1952.

Her paper below was published with the renowned Gestalt psychologist Mary Henle who supervised her master's thesis.
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Dr. Kapostins (left) was a faculty member from 1956 to 1987 (chair 1962-1973; 1980-1987). He earned his PhD from Columbia University in 1961 with the dissertation 'The effects of differential reinforcement of low rate on word utterance.' His dissertation advisor was Fred Keller, noted behaviorist and classmate and friend of B.F. Skinner.
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Frank Oja (right) was a graduate student at the New School for Social Research when teaching at Wagner from 1955 to 1957. He had a research lab on the second floor of Cunard Hall- this was likely the first psychology laboratory at Wagner College.
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