Luca Maurer, LGBT Center program director, was selected as a co-recipient of the American Psychological Association’s Division 44 Distinguished Contribution to Education and Training Award for 2017. Division 44 is the division of the APA that focuses on research, practice, and education on the lives and realities of LGBT people.
The award is given to those who have made distinguished contribution to the interests, goals and purposes of LGBT work in the area of academic and public education. Honorees are recognized as professionals who have distinguished themselves in disseminating science and scholarship on LGBT issues. Maurer has worked tirelessly to raise the consciousness of the community about LGBT issues, and with his co-author of The Teaching Transgender Toolkit, Eli Green, has helped to improve education and training about transgender people and topics.
The thoughtful and compelling nomination details Maurer and co-author Eli Green’s extensive work to improve the quality of education and training in psychology, at undergraduate and graduate levels and in the community-at-large, with regard to LGBT issues and particularly related to transgender people, topics, advocacy, and education. Maurer’s broad work, including his co-authorship of The Teaching Transgender Toolkit, sheds light on the lived experience of transgender people as well as the compassion, skills, and advocacy required to make our communities, classrooms and homes places where transgender people can thrive.
The Teaching Transgender Toolkit was published in November 2015 and in its third printing, has been sold in more than a dozen countries. Its versatility has led to it being used in college classrooms, as well as in social service, mental health, and medical settings, and by teachers, counselors, and therapists, as well as parent and community groups of all types. The book was recognized by the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors & Therapists as its Book of the Year in 2016, and Maurer received the Significant Research/Publication Award of the College Student Personnel Association of New York State, also in 2016. From the nomination, “These multiple recognitions, along with the timeliness and comprehensive scope of the book make it a truly significant achievement by Green and Maurer. This, combined with their years of experience in providing transgender and LGBT education, and developing curricula and tools for use in psychology programs and continuing professional development (as well as for the general public), make them worthy of consideration for this distinguished honor.”
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20170831153637390