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Defining the social animal

Elliot Aronson '54

Being in the right place at the right time can make all the difference.

For Elliot Aronson, the right place was Brandeis, where a chance encounter with famed psychology professor Abraham Maslow led him to launch a career as one of the 20th century’s most eminent psychologists. Author of the seminal textbook "The Social Animal," Aronson was a graduate student at Stanford when he devised a now-classic experiment on cognitive dissonance.

Throughout his life, he has repeatedly broken new ground in understanding human behavior and social interaction, demonstrating that changing people’s behavior will change their attitudes. He has adapted that lesson for society’s benefit with the “jigsaw classroom,” showing that having clusters of students work together to solve problems helps quell racial conflict and violence in schools.

Aronson is the only person in the 120-year history of the American Psychological Association to have received all three of its major awards: for distinguished research, distinguished writing and distinguished teaching. In 2007, he also received a lifetime achievement award from the Association of Psychological Science, which cited him as a man who “fundamentally changed the way we look at everyday life.”

Doing science the NOVA way

Paula Apsell '69

You might think of her as a curious mind with a scientist’s approach, thriving under pressure while tackling difficult, politically charged subjects. Arguably the most influential science television executive around, Paula Apsell is director of the WGBH Science Unit and Senior Executive Producer of "Nova." For more than two decades, Apsell and her team have set the gold standard for creating highly informative, educational and appealing science programming while winning every major broadcasting award and juggling more than thirty projects at a time.

Describing public television as “an incubator for ideas,” Apsell credits Brandeis with giving her the skills for intellectual exploration. “The general atmosphere at Brandeis was one where critical thinking was emphasized,” she says. “As a science journalist, I try to apply that to science, to really grasp the whole field, delving into the personalities responsible for discoveries and the social consequences of discoveries in the lab.”

Getting what she wanted

Laura Gerber ’07

Laura Gerber knew what she was looking for in a university. “I wanted a liberal arts school that had a good science program. I wanted to be involved in music. I wanted an urban school that still had a campus feel,” she says.
    
Gerber played oboe in the Brandeis-Wellesley Orchestra during her freshman year and in a chamber music ensemble for the rest of her undergraduate career. Her interest in science never wavered, either. She majored in chemistry, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees simultaneously while making discoveries in organometallic chemistry: “I found it exciting, as an undergraduate, to have my own independent project to work on.”

Organometallic chemistry that remained her focus through a Fulbright year at the University of Bergen, Norway, and into her current Ph.D. work at MIT.

Brandeis worked for Gerber, she says, because “After the intros the classes were small, and the professors were very involved with undergraduates.”