Fabulous Fossils Still Vertical! (Yay!) – Dr. Frank Webbe Teaches Biological Foundations

by William K Gabrenya Jr., Ph.D., Professor of Cultural and Social Psychology

In a new series of Journey articles, I will provide alumni with glimpses of senior SoP faculty (that would include me) teaching their favorite classes. For the first article, Dr. Frank Webbe, the department’s first full-time faculty member (1978), has generously agreed to be my first victim. Frank has worked at the intersection of clinical psychology and neuropsychology for nearly all of his career despite being trained at the University of Florida as a rat-runner, and has made significant contributions to science and practice in the areas of memory disorders and sports medicine. You can access more, and more proper, information about Dr. Webbe on his research page at https://www.fit.edu/faculty-profiles/8/frank-webbe. Former athletes should especially appreciate that he most recently received the prestigious NCAA David Knight Award for faculty athletics representatives.

In this short video, I have captured Dr. Webbe teaching the class that most undergrad and postgraduate alumni particularly cherished, Biological Foundations of Behavior (Physiological Psychology for undergrads). Alumni of the 1980s and 1990s might find it strange that all of his students are crouched behind laptops, taking notes on the PowerPoint file that is projected on the screen. We sometimes joke (complain) that our students seem to have become stenographers while the students likewise complain (not joking) that some faculty are just reading from old PowerPoint slides. (Historical note: PowerPoint came to us in 2000 when the department purchased a black-and-white projector and placed it on a “multimedia cart.”)