{"id":30907,"date":"2024-03-27T14:32:58","date_gmt":"2024-03-27T18:32:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=30907"},"modified":"2024-06-11T09:39:06","modified_gmt":"2024-06-11T13:39:06","slug":"the-einstein-example","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/the-einstein-example\/","title":{"rendered":"The Einstein Example"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Einstein

Einstein with his wife, Patty, in New Zealand. \/ Courtesy Photo<\/p><\/div>\n

Gil Einstein\u2019s work in psychology has been cited nearly 19,000 times, enough to land him on <\/span>a list of top scientists in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

But there\u2019s another way to measure his impact on the field: one person at a time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michael Scullin \u201907, for example, considers his work as an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University to be part of his former teacher\u2019s legacy, \u201cto pay forward the grace, the patience and the positivity he has shown me in my career and my life.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Beth Pontari, Furman\u2019s vice president for academic affairs and provost, says Einstein is the reason she started her teaching career in the university\u2019s psychology department.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI would not be sitting where I am if I had not had that relationship,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Einstein taught at Furman from 1977 until he retired in 2019. In 2023, he was ranked among the Best Psychology Scientists in the World by Research.com, which uses the number <\/span>of times a scholar\u2019s work is cited \u201cas a proxy for disciplinary impact,\u201d according to its announcement of the rankings.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a sign of innovation and it\u2019s a sign of being the leader in an area,\u201d Pontari says.<\/span><\/p>\n

For Einstein, it\u2019s satisfying knowing his ideas are moving forward.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels like the work that you\u2019re doing is not getting ignored and that it\u2019s contributing to the development of science,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

But these days Einstein spends more time on a surfboard than in a lab. He and his wife, Patty, moved to Daniel Island, South Carolina, about two years ago to be close to their children and grandchildren.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Life-altering experience\u2019<\/b><\/p>\n

Gilles Einstein was born in France. His father, a German Jew, had fled Frankfurt in 1933 and met Einstein\u2019s mother in France. The family immigrated to New Jersey in 1955.<\/span><\/p>\n

At Lafayette College, Einstein was a \u201cgood, but not great\u201d student, he says. \u201cI was studying to make good grades, but I wasn\u2019t really absorbed by what I was studying.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Einstein

Einstein with his students on his last day of class before retiring in 2019. \/ Courtesy Photo<\/p><\/div>\n

Then the opportunity to participate in undergraduate research in psychology <\/span>gave him a \u201clife-altering experience.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPsychology had everything to do with our lives,\u201d he says. \u201cIt deals with things that we experience every day, and I discovered that I loved using the scientific method to solve problems. … After that, I started studying for the right reasons.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He longed to give that kind of experience to students of his own someday. And the evidence suggests he did.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, Scullin tells a story of his early years at Furman that bears striking similarity to Einstein\u2019s Lafayette experience. Scullin started in a business program without feeling especially invested in his studies. That changed when he took a psychology class with Einstein.<\/span><\/p>\n

Scullin says the most brilliant researchers sometimes have reputations as intimidating teachers. Einstein, however, was warm and welcoming. For Scullin, the class flipped a switch.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI did my homework because I loved it so much,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Undergraduate research<\/b><\/p>\n

Einstein earned his Ph.D. in experimental and cognitive psychology from the University of Colorado. He loved teaching as much as he loved researching, and he found Furman to be the perfect place to do both.<\/span><\/p>\n

Undergrads were \u201cthe only option,\u201d he says, \u201cbut it turns out they\u2019re extremely capable.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He chose not to start his summer research assistants with fully developed projects. Instead, he\u2019d have them do background reading, discuss the readings as a group, then ask the students to think about the logical next steps.<\/span><\/p>\n

This process almost always led to a close approximation of what he\u2019d intended them to study all along.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe difference was, they had ownership in the project,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe got undergrads to do things that graduate students do,\u201d Pontari says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Undergraduate research is a defining feature of Furman today. But that wasn\u2019t necessarily the case in the 1970s when Einstein first arrived. The psychology and chemistry departments were early adopters.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFurman, to its credit, recognized the importance of it and encouraged it,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

And to his credit, Einstein developed a reputation for the academic trifecta: passionate teacher, world-class researcher and a colleague who made his department a place where others wanted to be.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no one quite like Gil,\u201d Pontari says. \u201cHe excelled in all the areas.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Einstein didn\u2019t expect other professors to copy him.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe just expected you to really care about our students, about our department, about Furman and about each other,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Prospective memory<\/b><\/p>\n

Einstein has spent his career studying memory and learning and how aging affects both.<\/span><\/p>\n

His specialty is prospective memory \u2013 remembering to do things in the future. The earliest research in the field relied on surveys to ask people, for example, how good they were at remembering to pass a message to a friend.<\/span><\/p>\n

With a colleague, Einstein developed a laboratory paradigm for studying prospective memory that is still being used today.<\/span><\/p>\n

The testing allows objective comparisons, and one of its earliest findings was that prospective memory doesn\u2019t automatically fade with age. When given a good memory cue, there\u2019s little difference in prospective memory between the young and the old. But when asked to remember without the help of a cue, a significant age difference appears.<\/span><\/p>\n

More recently, Einstein was working on ways to help younger students study more effectively. When the focus is shifted from rote memory to understanding concepts, students enjoy learning and get more out of their education.<\/span><\/p>\n

He was testing study methods in which students read material, explain it back to themselves and connect it to something they already know. That work is continuing at Furman.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSame amount of time, drastically different results,\u201d Einstein says.<\/span><\/p>\n

About that last name<\/b><\/p>\n

And yes, he\u2019s used to answering questions about his family connections.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a name that gets noticed,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Growing up, his grandfather told him the family was related to Albert Einstein. \u201cBut my father told me not to believe him,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

It turns out his grandfather was right.<\/span><\/p>\n

Albert was his third cousin, three times removed, or, if it\u2019s easier to think of this way, his great-grandfather\u2019s third cousin.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of his standard opening lines for the first day of a new class was a reliable hit with students: \u201cIt\u2019s not a close relationship, and I share very few genes in common.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Of his many professional recognitions, Einstein is proudest of receiving the Association for Psychological Science Mentor Award, which \u201crecognizes psychology researchers and educators who have shaped the future directions of science by fostering the careers of students and colleagues.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Scullin considers himself a beneficiary of Einstein\u2019s investment in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

At Baylor, he\u2019s not trying to \u201cbe Gil,\u201d which would only result in a bad version, he says. But in being himself, he\u2019s trying to model what his teacher did.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cI\u2019ve, as often as possible, tried to apply Gil\u2019s approach, the mentoring, that was so effective for me,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor Emeritus of Psychology Gil Einstein achieved the academic trifecta: passionate teacher, world-class researcher and a colleague who made his department a place where others wanted to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":272,"featured_media":30908,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2663,1963,2660],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","category-furman-magazine","category-spring-2024"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/272"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30907"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32605,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30907\/revisions\/32605"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}