Leah Silvieus, '07
One might find Noelle (Giffin) Wiersma, '90, in a variety of places these days: playing with her family (husband Tim graduated from Whitworth in 1989 and recently completed a master's degree in the School of Education) and pets, wandering around flea markets, working on her mystery-novel-in-progress, leading a meeting as faculty president, or in the classroom teaching psychology courses at Whitworth.
While a student at Whitworth, Wiersma was a self-professed book nerd and a psychology/French double major. She was also a junior-varsity basketball cheerleader and active in Psi Chi and the French Club.
"My time at Whitworth gave me a vision of what to aspire to as a psychologist of faith, whether counseling and teaching or researching and studying," Wiersma says. "For each of us the challenge of being a high-quality person looks somewhat different, but for me it has meant learning to acknowledge, confront, accept, embrace, and/or transcend, as appropriate, imperfections or darkness in myself, in others, and in the world. In many ways, that's what the process of counseling and therapy is all about."
After graduating from Whitworth, Wiersma received her M.A. from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and her Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
Wiersma enjoys the variety and stimulation of working on multiple research projects at once, and she says that she always has "several irons in the fire." Her recent research projects include a paper on secondary traumatic stress in news reporters and photojournalists, which she presented at the Western Psychological Association meeting in Vancouver, B.C., in May 2007. The paper examined whether making a record of an event in words or images might contribute to traumatic-stress responses.
"I began the project, along with two students, after I was awakened by nightmares one night after watching news footage of Hurricane Katrina," Wiersma says. "It got me wondering how those who record these events in words and capture these stories in images might be affected by their exposure to such traumatic events, as indirect as that exposure might be."
With all her interests and accomplishments, Wiersma still values the community in which she enjoyed being a student and to which she has returned as a professor.
"I love being in the midst of so many strong, smart, inspiring, interesting and spiritual people," Wiersma says. "My greatest accomplishments as a Whitworth professor probably occur in the course of the most ordinary days, whenever I remember to put aside whatever 'important' tasks I have at hand in favor of the immediate needs of my students and colleagues."
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Class Notes