President Rex E. Lee has appointed a new director for the Brigham Young University Women's Research Institute.
Bonnie Ballif-Spanvill, a member of the graduate school faculty at Fordham University in New York City, will assume her new post at the beginning of fall semester 1994. She will also serve as a professor of psychology at BYU.Dean Clayne L. Pope of the BYU College of Family, Home and Social Sciences, which oversees the Women's Research Institute, noted that Ballif-Spanvill has had a distinguished career as an educator and administrator at Fordham.
"She brings a strong background in research and academic administration as well as a lot of experience with gender issues," he said. "We're delighted that she's going to join us in the college."
Ballif-Spanvill joined the Fordham faculty in 1968 after receiving a doctorate from BYU in 1966 and working for two years at the University of Hawaii's Research and Development Center.
While at Fordham, she was chairwoman of the Division of Psychological and Education Services responsible for accredited graduate programs in counseling and educational psychology. She also served as coordinator of the school's educational psychology and research programs and director of Fordham's Center for Applied Motivational Research.
She is a fellow of the American Psychological Society and the American Psychological Association and was twice honored as a Fordham Faculty Fellow.
Ballif-Spanvill was a featured speaker at the 1986 and 1990 women's conferences sponsored by BYU and the Relief Society of the LDS Church, and has lectured throughout the United States and published extensively on issues of gender, emotions and self-esteem.
Founded in 1978, the BYU Women's Research Institute was created to study women's issues of concern to members of the LDS Church. The institute gathers and catalogs information and initiates and coordinates academic research at BYU and at other institutions on a wide variety of women's issues.
Throughout the year the institute sponsors conferences and symposiums as well as a popular brown-bag luncheon lecture series featuring addresses by professors and researchers whose projects have received support from the Institute.