Professor of Psychology, Steven Schandler Ph.D. Retires from Chapman after 45 Years of Service New endowment is announced in his honor
June 11, 2020
On May 21, 2020, Crean College hosted an online tribute to retiring Professor of Psychology, Dr. Steven Schandler. An on-campus retirement celebration was scheduled to take place in April but had to be postponed indefinitely due to the pandemic. Participants of the online event included faculty members in the Department of Psychology, select alumni, members of the Schandler family, University leaders, and of course, Professor Schandler himself.
To everyone’s surprise and delight, Dr. Schandler’s daughter, renowned ex-CIA agent and author Tracy Schandler Walder, announced the creation of the Dr. Steven Schandler Endowment for Psychology Student Research. The $50K endowment will be used to aid research and research-related activities for students majoring in Psychology at Chapman.
Professor Schandler began his career at Chapman in 1976 following the completion of his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. He founded the Cognitive Psychophysiology and Addiction Research laboratory. With over three decades of funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Alcohol Beverage Medical Research Foundation, Professor Schandler’s lab examined the interplay of brain and behavior in humans. As a cognitive psychophysiologist, Professor Schandler used behavioral, physiological, and brain imaging measures to evaluate the brain’s ability to process information while healthy and after deterioration or damage due to aging, substance abuse, or injury. Professor Schandler is a recipient of the Hua-Cheng Wang/Fradkin Distinguished Professorship and twice recipient of the Valerie Scudder Award for outstanding faculty achievement in scholarship and teaching.
In addition to his teaching and research accomplishments, Professor Schandler was a beloved faculty mentor and student advisor. He founded the CU Chapter of Psi Chi International and served as its advisor until 2018. The power of his mentorship has been cited by alumni more times than can be counted, including 2019 Crean College Commencement speaker and Kaiser Permanente South Bay CAO, Ozzie Martinez.
We are so grateful to Professor Schandler and his years of service and would like to say “thank you” once again to his family for their generous legacy gift to the Department of Psychology!
