Bette L. Bottoms
Vice Provost for Undergraduate Affairs and Dean of the Honors College
Professor Bottoms has been a member of UIC's faculty since 1992, after receiving her Ph.D. in social psychology from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her research on child abuse, children's eyewitness testimony, and the influence of factors such as racial and anti-gay bias on jurors perceptions of child victims and of juvenile offenders has been funded by the National Institute on Mental Health and published numerous times in scholarly journals. She has co-edited five books and serves on the editorial boards of Law and Human Behavior; Psychology, Public Policy, and Law; and Child Maltreatment. Professor Bottoms is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) and a recipient of the American Psychology-Law Society Early Career Award and of the Todays Chicago Woman Foundation Rising Star Award for career and community contributions.
Professor Bottoms has received an unprecedented number of awards for outstanding undergraduate and graduate teaching and mentoring, including the UIC Honors College Fellow of the Year Award, Flames Alumni Award for Teaching Excellence, Silver Circle Award, the Teaching Recognition Program Award (twice), the Teaching Excellence Award, and national awards including the American Psychology-Law Society Award for Outstanding Teaching and Mentoring and the APA Society for the Teaching of Psychology Robert S. Daniel Award. Upon the recommendation of her students and the staff in her department, she was also among the first winners of the UIC Inspire Award. Professor Bottoms regularly mentors Psychology Department majors, Honors College students, and Summer Research Opportunities Program students in her research laboratory.
In addition to significant departmental, college, and university committee work such as the UIC 2010 Strategic Thinking Committee and the campus Promotion and Tenure committee, Professor Bottoms prior leadership experience includes appointments as Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Psychology and Associate Dean in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Nationally, she served as President of the APA's Society for Child and Family Policy and Practice and of the APA Section on Child Maltreatment.