New Psychology Undergraduate Scholarships

Michelle (Rogers) Villegas-Gold Undergraduate Scholarship in Psychology

The Villegas-Gold Undergraduate Scholarship in Psychology was established by UA Psychology Alum Michelle Villegas-Gold to assist undergraduate students majoring in Psychology who are first-generation college students and are unlikely to receive funding to graduate, with an interest in pursuing a career in gender issues, sexual trauma, or mental health issues. The first recipient of this scholarship is Psychology undergrad Jacob Ybarra. 

The John Weiner and Lynne Lehrman Weiner Memorial Scholarship

The John Weiner and Lynne Lehrman Weiner Memorial Scholarship was created by my husband Jim Sullivan and me, Sara Weiner, to honor my parents. 

My mother’s father Philip R. Lehrman was a neurologist and psychoanalyst who practiced in New York City from the 1920s-1950s. Early in his career he had a five-year correspondence with Sigmund Freud hoping to be accepted as Freud’s personal student and analysand. Despite Freud’s poor health at the time, he eventually agreed and my grandfather went to Vienna, Austria in 1928 with my grandmother, my uncle Howard who was 6, and my mother who was 2. My grandfather spent a year studying with Freud and also took home movies of Freud, Freud’s family, and many of the psychoanalysts at that time. After my grandfather died, my mother worked for years to preserve these historic films, identify the people who appeared in the film, and turn the film into a documentary entitled “Sigmund Freud, His Family and Colleagues, 1928-1947” that premiered at the Freud Museum in Vienna in 1999 as part of a special year-long exhibit. My Mom then edited a book published in 2008 entitled “Sigmund Freud Through Lehrman’s Lens,” which includes the history of psychoanalysis in cities around the world at the time the films were taken.

My father’s family owned hotels in the Catskill Mountains in NY starting in 1919 and also later in Miami Beach. As air travel became more common in the 1950s, business declined and my father transitioned to teaching. Every weekend for five years he and the family drove 120 miles from upstate NY to NYC so he could complete his masters degree in history and English at NYU. My father was a dedicated, innovative, and beloved middle-school English teacher for over 25 years. One project, for which he received a grant, was to use New Yorker magazine cartoons to teach vocabulary; another was used to encourage reading -- Dad lined the back of his classroom with shelves of books from garage sales and donations. Students could take, and keep, as many books as they wanted! After my dad retired he turned his “Free Books” idea into a way to raise money through donations for the homeless in White Plains, NY for which he won numerous awards from the city, county, and state.

My husband Jim and I have called Tucson our home for 25 years. We are both psychologists - Jim is a Criminal Forensic Neuropsychologist and I am an Industrial and Organizational Psychologist and a member of the Advisory Board for the Department of Psychology at the U of A. Our daughter Alyssa Sullivan graduated with a BS in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science with a Psychology minor from the U of A in 2018 and is in her first year in the Clinical Psychology doctoral program at the University of Iowa. Our son Zachary is in 11th grade.

My parents would be thrilled to know this scholarship is going to help support an exemplary undergraduate student in Psychology. It is our family’s distinct pleasure to honor my parents by supporting the outstanding Department of Psychology!

Sara Weiner, Ph.D.

The first recipient of this scholarship is Psychology undergrad Erin Mamaril.