Southwestern Magazine | Spring 2019

ErinCrockett ’05 Associate Professor of Psychology Crockett “loved every second” of the year she spent living in Edinburgh, Scotland, as a postdoctoral fellow. She has since helped lead the SULondon semester abroad program, and this summer, she will be traveling with the SU Euro- pean Cultural Exploration program, in which students will explore and learn inLisbon, Portugal; Grenoble, France; and Budapest, Hungary. How long have you been teaching? The first time I ever taught a course was at St. Edwards University in 2008. How long have you been at Southwestern? I’ve been teaching here since 2011, but I’m also an alumna. What inspired you to become a professor? When I came to Southwestern, I wanted to be a lawyer, to be an advocate for children in the foster-care system. I majored in psychology because I enjoy research. That data-analysis side of psychological research drew me in, as did the topics I was studying: I was really interested in questions of gender in relationships and what that means for our psychological and physical health. I also loved teaching so much. What is something your students would be surprised to know about you? I’m a terrible speller, and my emails are full of grammatical errors unless I edit them 30 times. When not working, you can findme … Traveling and jogging. I started jogging as an undergrad at Southwestern. My first year, the lacrosse teamneeded a player, and I had never played a sport inmy life, but at a small school, those things happen sometimes. For practice, we had to jog a mile, and I could never finish. A teammate helpedme get up to five miles, and then I thought, “I’m going to keep going.” And before graduating, I ran a full marathon. If you could have a drink at the Cove with anyone in the world, living or dead, what would the beverage be, who would the person be, and why? My grandmother—because Imissher. I don’t carewhatwedrink. Describe your dream vacation. I don’t have a dream vacation; I have a bucket list of places where Iwant to go. The easiest one isNewZealand. ThenSouth America—I want to climbMachu Picchu and see the salt flats in Bolivia. But my favorite place that I’ve never been is Kenya. When I was a little girl, I did a research project on Kenya, and I’ve always wanted to go, but I’ve never had the opportunity. If you could choose one superpower, what would it be? To make time stop. When you reflect on your time at Southwestern, what comes to mind? What made me want to come back to Southwestern is one of our taglines about making meaning and making a difference. In our curriculum, the thing that I’mproudest of is our social- justice tag. And I love how passionate our students become about different issues that are important to themand how they take that and do really amazing things. What advicewould you give students going into your field today? For students going into my field, learn what open science is [a commitment to improving the openness, integrity, and reproducibility of scholarly research]. Slow down science, anddo it right. Getting it right ismore important thangetting the publication.Forstudentsingeneral,learnhowtoengagewellwith people fromdiverseperspectives. Learn fromthoseperspectives even if youdon’t ultimately adopt them. Take advantage of those conversations, learn, and let that bepart of the identity formation that happens here at Southwestern. 17 SOUTHWESTERN