Associate Professor of Psychology Cody Brooks was surprised in class by visitors bearing good news - and a check for $2,000.

Brooks’ “History and Systems of Psychology” class was interrupted by officials from the Licking County Foundation, who presented him with the 2020 Tibbie Leslie Travel Grant for Educators Award.

Brooks notes the award “is for my travel to Leipzig to conduct interviews and document about artifacts from Wilhelm Wundt’s experimental psychology laboratory.”

“Wundt is widely considered to have established the first psychology laboratory in the world and was certainly very influential in establishing psychology as a worldwide scientific discipline.

“The Leipzig lab was destroyed in WWII bombing. A fair number of artifacts survived intact. I have learned that many other artifacts exist that are partially damaged or in some way not in museum condition, yet these may be very valuable to better understanding this early lab and the man who trained so many important PhD psychologists in it. An elderly expert has first-hand knowledge of these artifacts. I intend to interview that person with the aid of a German interpreter.”

February 20, 2020