Michael P. Toglia to Retire from SUNY Cortland

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Michael P. Toglia (photo credit to Bob Kaussner)

CORTLAND, NY (08/12/2008)(readMedia)-- Michael P. Toglia, who has served on the SUNY Cortland faculty for 30 years and is considered to be at the forefront on research in the fields of human cognition and information processing, will retire on Aug. 31.

Toglia, who was honored with the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1986 and the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities in 2007, will earn the designation of professor emeritus of psychology.

He plans to move to Jacksonville, Fla., where he will chair the Psychology Department at the University of North Florida.

A native of Tucson, Ariz., Toglia earned his bachelor's degree in psychology, with a minor in mathematics, from the University of Arizona in Tucson. He received his master's in experimental psychology and his doctorate in experimental psychology from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Toglia served as an instructor at University of Colorado and as a visiting assistant professor at Purdue University. He joined SUNY Cortland in 1978 as an assistant professor and was promoted to the rank of professor in 1991. Toglia chaired his department from 1997-2000. He has chaired the College's Undergraduate Research Council, a campus organization that he launched and whose purpose is to broaden and strengthen undergraduate research opportunities throughout campus disciplines.

At SUNY Cortland, he taught courses in cognitive psychology and statistics at the undergraduate and graduate levels as well as undergraduate courses in learning and memory, experimental psychology, psycholinguistics and introductory psychology.

Since 2003, he has served as executive director of the international organization, the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition (SARMAC). Toglia also is currently on SARMAC's governing board and the editorial board of the society's official journal, Applied Cognitive Psychology. Since 2003, he has been a councilor in the Psychology Division of the Council on Undergraduate Research and served on its Nominating Committee.

He is the co-author of nine books, most of which are edited volumes devoted to issues on eyewitness memory and testimony. These include Volume 1 and Volume 2 of The Handbook of Eyewitness Psychology, which was published last year by Erlbaum of Mahwah, N.J. Other co-authored books include Children's Eyewitness Memory (Springer-Verlag, 1987), Adult Eyewitness Testimony: Current Trends and Developments (Cambridge University Press, 1994) and Eyewitness Memory: Theoretical and Applied Perspectives (Erlbaum, 1998).

Additionally, Toglia has written more than 50 published, scientific book chapters or articles in his field of study and has provided some 300 professional reviews for many journals in his area of research, including the journal Memory, which he served as action editor. In 1991, he wrote a chapter on "Memory Impairment: It Is More Common Than You Think" in the edited volume The Suggestibility of Children's Recollections for the American Psychological Association. He penned "Repressed Memories: Lost and Found?" that appeared in The Recovered Memory/False Memory Debate (Academic Press, 1996).

A reviewer of National Science Foundation grant proposals, Toglia recently completed a two-year position as a consultant on a National Institutes of Health grant concerning false memory in special populations.

He has testified or consulted in numerous cases involving the suggestibility of memory and lineup identification, has been interviewed by several national newspapers and has appeared on National Public Television. He has presented his research findings at 125 conferences, including international psycho-legal conferences in Scotland, Belgium, England, Sweden and Canada.

Toglia is a Fulbright Senior Specialist. His work on eyewitness accuracy and fallibility was largely the basis for his election in 1997 to Fellow in Division 41 (Psychology and the Law) of the American Psychological Association. He is also an APA Fellow in Division 3 (Experimental), a reflection of his scholarly reputation in the field of human memory and cognition.

His research has been supported by grants from the Science Directorate of the American Psychological Association and the Family Life Development Center.

Toglia has been an external examiner on doctoral dissertation committees at SUNY Binghamton, SUNY Albany, Syracuse University and Tufts University. He is a member of many professional organizations, including the American Psychological Association, the American Psychology-Law Society, the Psychonomic Society and Sigma Xi.

In 2007, SUNY Cortland bestowed on him the Outstanding Achievement in Research Award.

A resident of Homer, N.Y., he is married to Cathy and has two grown children, Brian and Jessica.

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