UNews - Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre

5 questions with . . . Dr. Bonnie Lee

trevor.kenney — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 18:06:57 +0000

Dr. Bonnie Lee is an associate professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences (Addictions Counselling). She obtained her doctoral degree from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Ottawa and is a registered marriage and family therapist and a clinical member and approved supervisor with the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.

Lee favours an ecological, human systems-paradigm in her teaching, clinical practice and research. Her driving force is the desire to enhance the lives and health of individuals in their contexts of family, culture and society. She has been an invited keynote speaker and workshop leader in Canada and internationally.

What first piqued your interest in your research discipline?

I have always been intrigued by questions about human nature, the universal elements and deep structure of healing and human transformation. For my doctorate, I was led to the work of Virginia Satir (1916-1988), a woman pioneer in family therapy.

Satir chose the path of staging experiential workshops rather than conducting academic research and writing for scholarship. However, the 'culture' she created with her followers and her style of workshops invited an ethnographic approach to further understanding of her work. This research led to the development of a four-dimensional theory centred on the construct of "congruence" which I systematized into a treatment model for problem gambling and other addictions. Currently I am formulating and testing a relational framework to understand addictions.

Dr. Bonnie Lee looks to enhance the health of the family unit through her research in the Faculty of Health Sciences.

How is your research applicable in the 'real world'?

One of the joys of clinical research is that it engages both the mind and heart; it also brings together theory, empirical findings and practice. Such research can make an impact in services and in the alleviation of people's suffering in profound ways.

With a major 2004-2006 research grant from the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre, I trained 21 Ontario-based problem gambling counsellors in Congruence Couple Therapy (CCT), who then were able to apply the model in their treatment agencies with clients and enhance the work they do with couples.

The same model can be used with individuals, but when you work with couples, you change the primary relationship context for the client with addiction. Changes in this executive couple system in the family have spinoffs to the children, extended family and workplace relationships.

What is the greatest honour you have received in your career?

In 2010, my students nominated me for the Lethbridge YWCA Woman of Distinction Award (Spirit of Women). I feel honoured by the acknowledgment that came with this award.

How important are students to your research endeavours?

I have mentored many keen and bright undergraduate students in my research program. Several students were funded through the Chinook Summer Research Award and others elected to work with me through independent studies. It was not until my postdoctoral fellowships when I took part in a range of research projects through an apprenticeship, hands-on model under the tutelage of a Research Chair. So it is exciting to see how undergraduate students take to such opportunities early in their careers. Some aspire to graduate studies and research after such an experience; others say they have come to appreciate the rigour of research inquiry and want to refer to the evidence base in their practice.

If you had unlimited funds, which areas of research would you invest?

We live in a climate that places a premium on innovations. That's a good thing. An innovation is new knowledge that creates better products and processes that add value to services and outcomes. It can result in greater productivity, better and more output per input with payoffs in cost savings and improved quality of life.

To make this happen, I would put money into creating pathways for innovations from research to be transferred into practice and adoption by the health services system. This is a complex process that involves linking researchers, decision-makers and practitioners. For clinical research, it is a necessity to reach out beyond the ivory tower and engage those in the field for an innovation to ultimately take hold and bear fruit.

This story first appeared in the November issue of the Legend. For a look at the Legend in a flipbook format, follow this link.

5 questions with . . . Dr. Bonnie Lee

trevor.kenney — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 21:20:55 +0000

What first piqued your interest in your research discipline?

Dr. Bonnie Lee looks to enhance the health of the family unit through her research in the Faculty of Health Sciences.

How is your research applicable in the 'real world'?

What is the greatest honour you have received in your career?

In 2010, my students nominated me for the Lethbridge YWCA Woman of Distinction Award (Spirit of Women). I feel honoured by the acknowledgment that came with this award.

How important are students to your research endeavours?

If you had unlimited funds, which areas of research would you invest?

This story first appeared in the November issue of the Legend. For a look at the Legend in a flipbook format, follow this link.

Fenske made the most of his U of L opportunities

trevor.kenney — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 21:50:46 +0000

When he enrolled in psychology at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, Dr. Mark Fenske (BSc '96, Distinction) had a goal – he wanted to help people.

The associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Guelph, and co-author of the Canadian best-seller, The Winner's Brain: 8 Strategies Great Minds Use to Achieve Success, initially thought about becoming a counsellor. But after the opportunity to work as a research assistant for
Dr. Scott Allen opened up, Fenske found he was hooked on cognitive psychology.

"Lethbridge has some really good people. You get to know these people on a level that you probably wouldn't at a larger institution," says Fenske. "Working with Drs. Scott Allen, John Vokey and Don Read, who were the cognition faculty in the psychology department at the time, was a bit of an awakening for me. I was able to learn about memory, about how we interact with the world around us, what drives our behaviour, how we make decisions and how we pay attention.
"I learned there is so much more to psychology than the commonly-held view of people lying on a couch and talking about their problems."

Alumnus Mark Fenske is thankful for the research foundation he established while still an undergraduate student.

Fenske made the most of his one-on-one opportunities with faculty.

"I was able to get a lot of face time with faculty and learn what life in a research lab is all about," he says. "It really cultivated a sense of excitement for research, and I was given a lot of responsibility. I learned a lot in terms of computer programming, setting up experiments, running subjects and how to analyze data. Those are skills and training that I otherwise might not have gotten until grad school."

By the time he graduated in 1996, Fenske knew that he wanted to pursue a career in academia.

"One of the driving forces for me has always been about how I can have a positive impact on others. A lot of the people who have had a major influence on my life have been teachers or instructors," he says. "If you are teaching three or four classes a year and each class has up to 100 students, you have the potential to have a positive influence on lots of people. And as an academic, when you are not preparing or giving lectures, you get to investigate important issues that you find interesting. It is a fantastic job."

Supported by NSERC scholarships, Fenske completed both a master's and PhD in psychology from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Waterloo by 2001. After a two-year post doc at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Wales in Bangor, Fenske moved to Boston, Mass. in 2003, where he began to integrate cognitive psychology with neuroscience, the study of the brain.

"In Boston I worked at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, where I had a dual appointment as a research fellow with Harvard Medical School and as an assistant in neuroscience at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). With rapid advances in neuroimaging technology, it became clear that we could learn a lot more by combining our study of human cognition with neuroscience," says Fenske. "Using MRI scanners, we were able to look at the structure of the brain and the areas of activation that related to different cognitive operations. What I now do is try to understand how it is that we do what we do. How do we pay attention to things, remember things and what elicits different emotional responses?"

Fenske spent four years at MGH and Harvard, the last two as faculty, before returning to Canada to work at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Guelph in 2007. In spite of the years of intense research and study, he has never lost sight of his original goal of helping people.

In recent years, he has worked on bringing the knowledge he has gained about cognitive-affective neuroscience to the general public. His work on The Winner's Brain with Dr. Jeff Brown serves as an example.

"The book is all about the neuroscience of success," says Fenske. "What we do with our brain – the different ways in which we stimulate, engage and care for it – can have a significant impact on the way it works, and even alter its physical landscape. We looked at what the latest brain science says about people that excel in key areas related to success, and the various strategies the rest of us can use to fine-tune our brains and become more successful."

GET THE FACTS

· The Winner's Brain was on Amazon Canada's bestseller list, ranking 20th in the All Books category and first in both the Psychology and Success classifications. U of L neuroscience instructor, Dr. Bryan Kolb, is featured in the book.

· Fenske writes a bi-weekly column, Better Brain, for the Globe and Mail newspaper.

· He is the recipient of grants in excess of $1 million and is currently working with the Gambling Research Exchange Ontario.

· Fenske has published more than 35 articles, abstracts and theses, and has presented at more than 40 conferences and seminars.

This story first appeared in the Legend. For a full look at the January issue of the Legend, follow this link.

Fenske appreciates opportunities he was given

trevor.kenney — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 22:48:22 +0000

When he enrolled in psychology at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, Dr. Mark Fenske (BSc '96, Distinction) had a goal – he wanted to help people.

The associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Guelph, and co-author of the Canadian best-seller, The Winner's Brain: 8 Strategies Great Minds Use to Achieve Success, initially thought about becoming a counsellor. But after the opportunity to work as a research assistant for Dr. Scott Allen opened up, Fenske found he was hooked on cognitive psychology.

Alumnus Mark Fenske is thankful for the research foundation he established while still an undergraduate.

"Lethbridge has some really good people. You get to know these people on a level that you probably wouldn't at a larger institution," says Fenske. "Working with Drs. Scott Allen, John Vokey and Don Read, who were the cognition faculty in the psychology department at the time, was a bit of an awakening for me. I was able to learn about memory, about how we interact with the world around us, what drives our behaviour, how we make decisions and how we pay attention.
"I learned there is so much more to psychology than the commonly-held view of people lying on a couch and talking about their problems."

Fenske made the most of his one-on-one opportunities with faculty.

"I was able to get a lot of face time with faculty and learn what life in a research lab is all about," he says. "It really cultivated a sense of excitement for research, and I was given a lot of responsibility.
I learned a lot in terms of computer programming, setting up experiments, running subjects and how to analyze data. Those are skills and training that I otherwise might not have gotten until grad school."

By the time he graduated in 1996, Fenske knew that he wanted to pursue a career in academia.

"One of the driving forces for me has always been about how I can have a positive impact on others. A lot of the people who have had a major influence on my life have been teachers or instructors," he says. "If you are teaching three or four classes a year and each class has up to 100 students, you have the potential to have a positive influence on lots of people. And as an academic, when you are not preparing or giving lectures, you get to investigate important issues that you find interesting. It is a fantastic job."

Supported by NSERC scholarships, Fenske completed both a master's and PhD in psychology from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Waterloo by 2001. After a two-year post doc at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Wales in Bangor, Fenske moved to Boston, Mass. in 2003, where he began to integrate cognitive psychology with neuroscience, the study of the brain.

"In Boston I worked at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, where I had a dual appointment as a research fellow with Harvard Medical School and as an assistant in neuroscience at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). With rapid advances in neuroimaging technology, it became clear that we could learn a lot more by combining our study of human cognition with neuroscience," says Fenske. "Using MRI scanners, we were able to look at the structure of the brain and the areas of activation that related to different cognitive operations. What I now do is try to understand how it is that we do what we do. How do we pay attention to things, remember things and what elicits different emotional responses?"

Fenske spent four years at MGH and Harvard, the last two as faculty, before returning to Canada to work at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Guelph in 2007. In spite of the years of intense research and study, he has never lost sight of his original goal of helping people.

In recent years, he has worked on bringing the knowledge he has gained about cognitive-affective neuroscience to the general public. His work on The Winner's Brain with Dr. Jeff Brown serves as an example.

"The book is all about the neuroscience of success," says Fenske. "What we do with our brain – the different ways in which we stimulate, engage and care for it – can have a significant impact on the way it works, and even alter its physical landscape. We looked at what the latest brain science says about people that excel in key areas related to success, and the various strategies the rest of us can use to fine-tune our brains and become more successful."

GET THE FACTS

• The Winner's Brain was on Amazon Canada's bestseller list, ranking 20th in the All Books category and first in both the Psychology and Success classifications. U of L neuroscience instructor, Dr. Bryan Kolb, is featured in the book.

• Fenske writes a bi-weekly column, Better Brain, for the Globe and Mail newspaper.

• He is the recipient of grants in excess of $1 million and is currently working with the Gambling Research Exchange Ontario.

• Fenske has published more than 35 articles, abstracts and theses, and has presented at more than 40 conferences and seminars.

For a full look at the January issue of the Legend, follow this link.

UNews - Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre

5 questions with . . . Dr. Bonnie Lee

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5 questions with . . . Dr. Bonnie Lee

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Fenske made the most of his U of L opportunities

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Fenske appreciates opportunities he was given

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