One of UFV’s newest faculty members, Dr. Jelena Brcic, was mentioned in Psychology Today blog recently for her research on the coping strategies of astronauts.
She and her co-authors of the new study (entitled, ‘Coping strategies during and after spaceflight: Data from retired cosmonauts’), argue that negative psychological reactions in space are less publicized than catastrophic mechanical failures.
But they contend that such psychological reactions have significantly undermined the success of space missions in the past.
See the Psychology Today post here.
Dr. Jelena Brcic joined UFV’s School of Business in January of 2016. She obtained her PhD in social and personality psychology at University of British Columbia and completed her postdoctoral work at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. Her PhD dissertation examined how small, skilled, mission-oriented teams cope with working and living in extreme and unusual environments such as the International Space Station, field of combat, or tops of the world’s highest mountains. Her primary research interests include group cohesion in extreme workplaces, as well as, the benefits of goal setting and autonomy to aid performance in those workplaces.
She has also done work on subconscious priming and is interested in exploring the boundary conditions and theoretical explanations of how, if, and when priming influences behavior, more specifically consumer satisfaction and team performance.
She teaches courses in organizational studies and human resources.
She is happy to be living back in Vancouver with her husband and their BC-SPCA adopted black labrador retriever Razor and cat Mimi. She loves to travel and to host large dinner parties.