William.Farrar
Dr. Farrar is currently the Chair for the Division of Behavioral Sciences and Cultural Studies. He has been teaching psychology at Estrella Mountain Community College since 1999. He understands the community college experience from the student perspective, because he was once a community college student himself! He has taught the following classes:
- Psychology Statistics (including online courses)
- Research Methods
- Introduction to Psychology (including hybrid and honors courses)
- Biopsychology
- Psychology and Religion (including four years of study abroad in Prague)
- Psychology and Culture
- Psychology and Language
- Developmental Psychology
- Abnormal Psychology (including hybrid)
- Social Psychology
- Personality Psychology
- Cognitive Psychology Applied to Education (Summer course in Xalapa, Mexico for education faculty from Universidad Vericruzana)
However, he specializes in research methods, statistics, psychobiology and the psychology of religion.
Students in his research methods and honors courses design and run their own psychology research projects. In fact, over the last 10 years, students regularly present their research at the annual conferences, such as the Western Psychological Association or the American Psychological Association. He is committed to helping all students succeed, but particularly focuses on helping students who have chosen psychology to master the elements of psychological research by exposing them to the research and data analysis skills they will need to succeed if they go on to get their higher degrees.
When he isn't teaching, Dr. Farrar may be found thinking about something: how to use technology and technique to great great learning experiences, the role of art- poetry, painting, and media- in understanding the human condition, or the ways in which philosophy and history illuminate our social reality or exploring the creative possibilities of archetypal theory in art, life and teaching. Otherwise, he is probably doing some sort of data analysis; reading a book, writing on some topic or other, or getting out for a hike. Feel free to stop by and visit him whenever you like. He enjoys visitors and good conversation!
Interested in his academic interests? Check out his Google Scholar site too! The publication trail is a bit old, but it still reflects the topics that grab his imagination,He still enjoys exploring the ambiguity of language!
Interested in taking him a teacher? Check out his RateMyProfessor Ratings and Comments. Despite the fact that he teaches Research Methods and Statistics, two of the most challenging classes in psychology, students still appreciate his commitment to their success.
Publications in Language and Cognition
Farrar, W. T., Van Orden, G. C., & Hamouz, V. (2001). When SOFA primes TOUCH: Interdependence between spelling, phonology, and semantics in a primed naming task. Memory & Cognition, 29, 530-539.
Farrar, W. T., & Van Orden, G. C., (2001). Errors as multistable response options. Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences, 5, 223-265.
Farrar, W. T. (1997). Investigating single-word syntactic primes in naming tasks: A recurrent network approach. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 24, 648-663.
Farrar, W. T. (1994). Structure building: The search for a unified theory of language comprehension (Commentary on Gernsbacher's Language Comprehension as Structure Building). American Journal of Psychology, 107, 285-291.
Farrar, W. T., & Kawamoto, A. H. (1993). The return of "visiting relatives": Pragmatic effects in sentence processing. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 46A, 463-487.
Gibbs, R. W., Buchalter, D. L., Moise, J. F., & Farrar, W. T. (1994). Literal meaning and figurative language. Discourse Processes, 16, 387-404.
Kawamoto, A. H., Farrar, W. T., & Kello, C. (1994). When two meanings are better than one: Modeling the ambiguity advantage using a recurrent distributed network. (Special issue: Models of word recognition). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 20, 1233-1247.
Kawamoto, A. H., & Farrar, W. T. (1990). Non-obligatory vowel epenthesis in -ed pseudowords: Ambiguity resolved by syntax and suffixation. Language and Speech, 33, 137-158.
Van Orden, G. C., Bosman, A. M. T., Goldinger, S. D., & Farrar, W. T.. (1997). A recurrent network account of reading, spelling, and dyslexia. In: J.W. Donahoe (Ed.), Neural network models of complex behavior: A biobehavioral foundation (pp. 522-538). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Presentations and Publications in Analytical Psychology and Poetry
Farrar, W. T. (2013). Does Charles Olson Still Matter?. Presentation given at 24th Annual American Literature Association Conference 2013 in Boston, MA.
Farrar, W. T. (2015). Bonaventure of Bagnoregio's 'Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum' as Three Dimensional Mandala. Presentation given at the Joint Conference of the International Association of Analytical Psychology & International Association of Jungian Studies Conference in Yale University, New Hartford, Connecticut.
Farrar, W. T. (2018). The transcendent Hermaphroditos: Bernini, Saint Teresa, and the Pont Sant'Angelo. Presentation given at the Joint Conference of the International Association of Analytical Psychology & International Association of Jungian Studies Conference in Goethe-Institut Frankfurt, Germany.
Posters, Publications and Presentations in Teaching and Learning
Farrar, W. T. (2005). Jigsaw methodologies in a hybrid environment. Transforming Practice through Reflective Scholarship, 103-106. Tempe, AZ: Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction.
Farrar, W. T., Clark, D., Stover, D., Zimmerman, M., Tran-Nguyen, L., & Burtch, M. (2004). Building a Community for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: The MIL Model. Panel Presentation at Innovations 2004, San Francisco and published in MCLI Forum: Teaching, Learning, Technology in the Maricopa Community Colleges, 7, 4-6.
Stover, D. & Farrar, W. T. (2005). Collaborative Research: Who’s Doing What and Where Are We Going? Panel discussion presented at the 2nd Annual Conference of the Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Victoria, BC (Canada).
Stover, D., Farrar, W. T., & Zimmerman, M. (2005). Expanding the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at the Community College. Poster discussion presented at the 2nd Annual Conference of the Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Victoria, BC (Canada).
Zimmerman, M., Farrar, W. T. & Stover, D. (2006). The Best of Maricopa Institute for Learning Six Years of SoTL Projects in Undergraduate Education. Organized Panel presented at the 3rd Annual Conference of the Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Washington DC.
International Engagement
2004: Xalapa, Mexico: (2004) Developed and taught a faculty-training course, Cognitive Psychology applied to Education (Psicología cognoscitiva aplicada a la educación) for Spanish-speaking faculty at the Universidad Veracruzana- Xalapa.
2009-2012, Prague, Czech Republic: Four-week summer study-abroad program in Prague teaching Psychology of Religion. Curriculum include 80+ field trips to sites in Czech Republic and Austria
2017, Bosnia, Republika Srpska, Croatia and Albania: Fulbright-Hays Group Project Abroad “Balkan Borderlands” Investigated factors leading to breakdown of civil society in former Yugoslavia, and the role of religion and historical/political totemism in the creation of group polarization that can result in dehumanization.