Associate Professor of Psychology Karen Gunther wears many hats. She is a psychologist, a quilter, a scientist, and a musician.
She grew up in Palo Alto, California, wanting to be an artist. As she grew older, she wanted to be a scientist. So when the time came to choose what she wanted to do with her life, Gunther fused her interests in imagery, sound, and science into a career in Psychology.
Dr. Gunther’s interests in imagery and science were put to good use in both her graduate and post-graduate studies in color vision. The field has progressed to the point where genes can be sequenced to observe how genetics affects the way people see colors.
“In the red cone photo pigment where half the population has one gene and half has the other, we can see the different ways color is perceived behaviorally,” Gunther said. “The behavior would be how sensitive you are to sensing different reds.”
Although Wabash is her first tenure-track teaching position, Dr. Gunther has more than ten years teaching experience prior to Wabash, including positions at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, Oberlin College, and Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin. She has taught Sensation and Perception, The Cognitive Neuroscience of Music, Introductory Psychology, and Sensory Neuroscience.
Dr. Gunther received her B.A. in Biopsychology in 1992 from Oberlin College, where she was in the same class as Washington D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty. From there, she spent three years with Abbott Laboratories, a pharmaceutical and healthcare company in Chicago, where she focused on biochemical and behavioral studies as a Research Assistant. Dr. Gunther received her Master’s in Music Perception in 1997 and in her PhD in Interdisciplinary Cognitive Science in 2002, both from the University of California in San Diego. She then left California to do Post-Doctoral Research at the Medical College of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, where she learned about Molecular Genetic and Psychophysical Study of Color Vision.
Dr. Gunther heard about a position at Wabash through an ad sent to her by a colleague at St. Mary’s College.
“I wanted to work at a liberal arts college,” Gunther said. “I like smaller classes and interacting with students. Psychology classes at the University of California at San Diego were 200-300 students. I also wanted an upper-tier liberal arts college that emphasized faculty doing research. During my interview I met with a few students. I asked them about their research, and they not only responded articulately, but they also asked each other questions about each other's research. I liked that they weren't just answering the professor's questions, but seemed intellectually curious.”
Dr. Gunther hopes to help her students embrace the applicability of science in their field as well.
“A lot of psychology students end up [as psychology majors] because they don’t like science,” Gunther said. “My field is on the bridge of biology, so hopefully I can show students that there is something interesting and fun on this end of psychology. Most laypeople think that psychology is only about helping people. That is one part of the field of psychology, but there is a huge portion that is working to understand the NORMAL FUNCTIONING brain. We study this scientifically, by exposing some students to certain stimuli or certain situations, not exposing other subjects (the control group), and looking to see if the stimulus or situation caused the experimental group to behave differently.”
Before going to Oberlin, the extent of Dr. Gunther’s experience in the Midwest had been connecting flights at airports on her way to visit relatives. But having gone to school in Ohio, worked in Illinois and Wisconsin, and now teaching in Indiana, she has become accustomed to her new home.
“I keep coming back here and parts of it I like,” Gunther said. “I like the green here. It’s more of an emerald. In California, it’s more grey and brown. I like the country-side too, how peaceful it is when you’re driving.”
Dr. Gunther lives with her two cats Hippocampus and Amygdale, both named for parts of the brain.
“I think I get more respect at the veterinarian’s because of it,” she said.
Dr. Gunther played the violin for 20 years. She went a Suzuki workshop in Matsumoto, Japan in 1982, and has been on tour to Australia with a youth orchestra in 1988. She does not play currently, but she still owns her violin and hopes to get back into it someday. In her past time, she likes to quilt, bike, and read nonfiction science, fiction, and mystery.
Dr. Gunter will be teaching Intro to Psychology (PSY -101) and Sensation and Perception (PSY -232) this fall. She hopes to teach Cognitive Neuroscience of Music in the spring.