Faculty | Sybillyn Jennings
Sybillyn Jennings
My office in Gurley Hall is on the site where Emma Willard established the Troy Female Seminary in 1821. Little did I know when I was growing up in the Capital region that I would travel to California and there meet and marry my husband, a descendant of Jane Ann Smith who studied at the Troy Female Seminary. Jane Ann Smith's brief term at the Seminary was a deep and enduring resource as she traveled west to Illinois, married, raised ten children, and settled in Kansas. Her obituary describes her as a woman who gave her learning to the community. Russell Sage's emphasis on educating women for challenges to come continues in our core General Education program, "Women in the World/Women Changing the World," which I co-coordinate. My field of study in psychology is the development of mind--how, beginning in infancy, we feel, perceive, think, speak, imagine, and remember and how we assemble these "faculties," as once they were called, in order to learn. I love working in interdisciplinary learning environments, and I have been active in the design of a number of programs at Russell Sage--Founder's Seminar and Biopsychology. I am a fan of student productions--theatre, The Quill, athletics (especially basketball), and student posters on "Giving Psychology Away."
I joined the psychology faculty in 1976 after earning my Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. I hold an M.A. in psychology from San Jose State University and a B.A. in Language and Literature from Bennington College. In 1980 I held an NIMH postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Denver studying cognitive development. In 1986-1987, I participated in a National Network integrating professional preparation and liberal education at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Since 1994 I have been active in research evaluating K-12 mathematics, science, and technology education and in designing and facilitating professional development with teachers to support inquiry approaches to teaching. In 1996 I traveled to Geneva to make presentations at two conferences organized to celebrate the centennial year of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. Most recently I have been part of a team at Rensselaer's Academy of Electronic Media working on ways of helping classroom teachers use multimedia to deepen their students' understanding of powerful ideas. My continuing research interests are in the explication and study of M-mechanisms, from Mother to Mentor to Multmedia modules, that scaffold learning across the lifespan in a range of interactional environments.
Sybillyn Jennings, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology
The Sage Colleges
Troy, New York 12180
E-mail: jennis@sage.edu
OFFICE: Gurley Hall, Room 307 (Troy campus)
