Dr. Angela Byars-Winston earned a very high honor this past weekend having been selected for the 2017-18 John Holland Award for Outstanding Achievement in Career or Personality Research by the Society of Counseling Psychology (SCP). The award was presented at a formal ceremony this past Saturday, Aug. 11, at the American Psychological Association Conference in San Francisco, California.

Dr. Angela Byars-Winston with her 2017-18 John Holland Award for Outstanding Achievement in Career or Personality Research

The award recognizes notable research on career and personality topics. Investigators honored with the award are recognized by the society as having established research programs that are “sufficiently significant and sustained to be recognized as making a substantial impact on the field of counseling psychology,” according to the SCP.

“I’m absolutely honored to be recognized by my peers in psychology, especially since I conduct so much of my work in STEM and academic medicine,” Dr. Byars-Winston, a professor of General Internal Medicine, tells Madison365. “Dr. John Holland is one of the most influential psychologists and the creator of the Holland codes and career development model that defines career counseling. To receive an award named after him is not only an affirmation of my scholarship but motivation to continue doing work that increases diversity and equity in career development and the workforce.”

Dr. Byars-Winston’s research focuses on effective mentoring practices and her work examines cultural influences on career development, especially for racial and ethnic minorities and women in the sciences, engineering, and medicine. Specifically, she has focused on testing the validity of theoretical models to explain and predict academic and career outcomes using social cognitive theoretical approaches.

Last September, Byars-Winston made history becoming the first black tenure-track, full-professor in the UW-Madison Department of Medicine.