Michael Baranski, PhD

 

 

Dr. Michael Baranski is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, Counseling, and Art Therapy. At PennWest, Michael currently serves as the Faculty Advisor to the Mindfulness and Meditation Club. The club meets to meditate and discuss incorporating mindfulness into daily life, and has offered guided meditations during finals week to all campus students, staff, and faculty to reduce stress. Michael also serves on the Strike a Spark Planning Committee that celebrates student research and scholarship, as well as on the Strike a Spark Programming and Research Funding Subcommittees. Additionally, Michael also serves on the PennWest California Faculty Scholarship Committee and his department’s Assessment, Evaluation, Tenure, Promotion, and Curriculum Committees.

Michael blends campus service and scholarship by serving as a student research mentor; recently, he and a PennWest undergraduate collaborated on an international, multi-site study on the stress-reducing benefits of mindfulness meditation that has been published in Nature Human Behavior. Currently, he is working with fellow faculty and two PennWest undergraduates on how mindfulness practice effects the level of humanity one identifies with, in-group and out-group biases, and working memory. These projects have been recognized as impactful from their publications, presentations at local research conferences, and campus funding: $1000 by the Faculty Professional Development Committee and $1200 by the Strike a Spark Research Funding Committee. Michael’s student collaborators were also recognized for excellence during their research presentations at Strike a Spark conferences.

Michael continues to research the cognitive effects of mindfulness meditation, specifically regarding if mindfulness practice can improve or protect cognitive processes like working memory, executive functions, and learning and memory. Newer research is starting to explore how mindfulness can reduce stress and in-group and out-group biases, as well as what level of humanity people identify with (e.g., local, national, global). Other areas of Michael’s research include the relationship between declarative and procedural memory and metacognition applied to student learning. Michael’s work has been published in Nature Human Behavior, Mindfulness, the Journal of Cognitive Enhancement, College Teaching, and Educational Research: Theory and Practice. Michael has presented work at the annual conventions for the Association for Psychological Science, Psychonomic Society, Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the Midwest Psychological Association, and the Northern Rocky Mountain Educational Research Association.

EDUCATION

• Ph.D. in Psychological Science. Kent State University, May 2020
• Dissertation: The Effects of Brief Mindfulness Meditation on Executive Functions, Moderated by Trait Anxiety
• Advisor: Dr. Christopher A. Was

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• M.A. in Psychological Science. Kent State University, December 2017
• Thesis: Mindfulness Meditation May Enhance Working Memory Capacity
• Advisor: Dr. Christopher A. Was
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• B.S. in Secondary Education, Integrated Social Studies. Youngstown State University, August 2008