News Archives: GPRC Alumna Receives Academic Honour from CPA
Friday, February 23rd, 2018
GPRC alumna Emily Friesen-Peters has received a Certificate of Academic Excellence for her undergraduate thesis at the University of Alberta.
Every year, the Canadian Psychological Association (CPA) awards exceptional university students with the honour. Psychology departments across Canada nominate students who produce an outstanding undergraduate, master’s, or doctoral thesis.
Friesen-Peters chose to attend GPRC in 2012 because of its small class size and proximity to home.
“Having a smaller class size was great because it gave me the opportunity to get to know my professors a lot more,” she said. “If I had not gone to GPRC, I never would have met the amazing instructors who have deeply impacted my education.”
Psychology fascinated Friesen-Peters from an early age. Most recently, she was motivated by seeing loved ones struggle with mental health.
“I decided that I wanted to understand what they were going through and make a real difference,” she said.
Friesen-Peters’s award-winning psychology thesis was all about relationships. She examined the effects of what she called “relationship education” and its capacity to change people’s perceptions about their own romantic relationships or those of others.
“The results were mixed and full of surprises,” she said. Friesen-Peters is glad she persisted with her research, even when she felt like giving up. “Completing my own research was far more stressful than I ever would have imagined. Countless nights I wanted to erase everything I was working on because I was afraid of failure.”
Friesen-Peters’s struggles made the honour she received that much more gratifying. She said she was “ecstatic” upon hearing the news that her thesis had been selected. “It made all those hours of hard work worth it.”
She credits much of her success to the instructors who have helped her along the way, particularly GPRC Psychology Instructor Dr. Bruce Galenza.
“He is the most influential instructor I have ever had the pleasure of learning from,” she said. “He challenged me to be better. Instead of teaching me what to think, he taught me how to think critically. Having an instructor like that makes a world of difference.”
