It began as an outgrowth of Dr. Elizabeth Maynard’s positive psychology class, the part of the field that focuses on human excellence. Maynard cited literature that shows that experiencing and expressing gratitude reduces stress and increases the ability to think quickly and efficiently.

In class, she asked students to write down the aspects of their lives for which they were grateful, grouping each day’s activity into categories. One day it was people, another covered some of their experiences, another the events or things they are grateful for now but that didn’t appear to be positive when they happened. Maynard enlarged the project so that any student, faculty or staff member could post messages of gratitude.

This is just one of the creative ideas that make Maynard’s teaching stand out. The popular assistant professor of psychology came to UST in January of 2005 and feels right at home on the small liberal arts campus, where “I can continue the conversation on the dialogue between faith and reason, and that’s a dialogue I’m excited about.”

Growing up in a military family, Maynard was born in Bangkok, Thailand, and lived in Indonesia, Brazil and several places in the United States. Growing up in such diverse cultures “made me a keen observer of people and helped develop my curiosity about them.”  But it was her curiosity about her own psychological being and that of her family that convinced her to study psychology.

The Gratitude Project may have been Maynard’s idea to help her students learn, but she says she’s learned from it, too. She’s been touched again and again by messages of gratitude that students have written about professors and fellow students.

“That just reinforces how I feel about being at St. Thomas and being a part of this close community,” Maynard says. She feels especially comfortable at UST, she says, because the college she attended and another where she taught for several years were also small, liberal arts universities that fostered closeness among students, staff and faculty.

“It makes me realize how thankful I am for my own close relationships with my students and colleagues,” she said.

“The Psychology Program at the University of St. Thomas is an integration of research, methodology, social justice, a liberal arts curriculum and the study of human nature and mental processes,” said Maynard. “UST psychology students who get a Bachelor of Arts will graduate with the skills and strong scientific foundation essential for graduate studies and successful careers in psychology.”  You can reach Dr. Maynard at maynare@stthom.edu or 713-525-6967.  To find out more about a degree in psychology from UST go to www.stthom.edu/psychology.