Dr. Edward P. Kardas has been named director of the Honors College at Southern Arkansas University, effective July 1, 2009. He succeeds the founding director, Dr. Lynne Belcher.
Dr. Kardas has been at SAU since 1980 and holds the rank of full professor of psychology in the Behavioral and Social Sciences department. He received his PhD in comparative/developmental psychology from LSU, and his BA, also in psychology, from the University of Baltimore. Before coming to SAU, he taught at LSU-Eunice and at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Dr. Kardas has long been interested in honors education. He helped add SAU’s first honors level course, Honors Seminar, to the curriculum in 1986 after Dr. Bill Seay (SSC, 1960), then director of LSU’s Honors College, visited SAU.
In 2008, he co-authored, with Chris Spatz of Hendrix College, a textbook in psychological research methods published by McGraw-Hill. Dr. Kardas recently signed a contract with Cengage Publishers to author a text in the history of psychology. Kardas is also the author of two books on using technology in teaching.
Kardas teaches research methods, learning, comparative and physiological psychology, cognitive science, freshman seminar, and the history of psychology. In 2002, he was named SAU’s Honor Professor. He is currently a member of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and is a past-president of the Southwestern Psychological Association.
Dr. Kardas is married to the former Julie A. McCuller of Texarkana, a 1991 SAU graduate. They live in Magnolia with their three children Christian, Clay, and Cara.
