April 14, 2016 Dear APDC Members, It is my pleasure to write this letter of support for Dr. Anaya Mitra’s curriculum grant application for designing and teaching the course Psychology of Eating. Dr. Mitra is well-qualified and prepared to design and teach this course. She has her Ph.D. in biological psychology and has done extensive research on eating behaviors. Developing and teaching this course will provide Dr. Mitra with the opportunity to re-engage in some of her earlier work and training and provide a tremendous learning experience for students. Upon joining the faculty five years ago, Dr. Mitra began teaching core courses in our major: Statistical Methods, General Psychology, Memory and Cognition and recently The Reflective Woman. Although these courses generally fall within Dr. Mitra’s area of study, none of these classes were a core area in which Dr. Mitra specialized as a graduate student or as a post-doctoral fellow. Despite not having opportunities to teach within her specialized area of expertise, Dr. Mitra has performed exceedingly well and proven herself as a well-respected and highly-regarded professor. We are finally in a position, within the Psychology Department, for Dr. Mitra to teach a course within her area of expertise and I support her efforts to do this whole-heartedly. I believe this course will be highly sought after by our students and it will provide them with valuable experiences. As students and faculty have begun viewing next year’s schedule I have received numerous queries from students and faculty about this course. Students both within and outside of the major are eager to explore the topics Dr. Mitra proposes to cover in this course. Among our students, there is great interest in eating disorders and eating behaviors and this course will provide students with an academic avenue to explore this area. Many students pursuing a minor in psychology and a major in a healthrelated field such as Public Health, Nutrition, Exercise Science, Nursing, etc. are also eager to take the course as it highly relevant to their interests and major courses of study as well. This course will also provide all of our students with the opportunity to learn more about the biological underpinnings of our behavior. The biological basis of behavior is a key area of psychology and an area of psychology that our department does not cover well. This course is a great opportunity to expand our course offerings into an area that is much needed within our department. In order for Dr. Mitra to design this course and make it a valuable learning experience for students, she needs funding from APDC. Although Psychology is a science, it does not receive the same levels of funding for laboratory materials and supplies as other scientific departments on campus. We have very limited funds available to support Dr. Mitra’s efforts to design and test classroom activities and support students’ research activities in the classroom as well. By receiving funding from APDC, Dr. Mitra will have some flexibility in designing and testing various classroom activities and in providing opportunities for her students to design and engage in various research experiences as well. After going through one course offering, Dr. Mitra will have a stronger sense of the materials she absolutely needs in order to provide meaningful, hands-on activities and research experiences for students and we can then work to build those materials expenses into our departmental budget. Without APDC funds for this first course

offering, Dr. Mitra will be significantly constrained in the activities she can engage her students and the students will need to fund their research experiences out of their own pockets. In summary, Dr. Mitra’s application describes a clear and feasible plan for developing an exciting and much-needed course within our department. Providing her with funds to support the time, energy and materials it will take to design and teach this course will benefit undergraduate students both within- and outside-of our department. I am confident that Dr. Mitra can design and successfully teach a strong course in this area and I highly recommend her proposal to you. Sincerely, Jamie J. Peterson Jamie J. Peterson, Ph.D. Department Chair and Associate Professor, Psychology Department