Cool Cat: Heidi Perez

Q&A by Asia Long, photo courtesy of Heidi Perez

Heidi Perez is the department chair for the Psychology Department here at CWU. She has spent the past three years helping grow and improve the department through student focused initiatives and beneficial programs.

Q: How long have you been the department chair for the Psychology Department here at Central?

I started as department chair January of 2023, it’s been three years and a little bit, just shy of four years. 

Q: To add on to that, what is the favorite part of the work you do?

A lot of the work I do is kind of behind the scenes management of various parts of the department. So scheduling and problem solving and communications. I think one of my favorite parts of the job is solving problems, interacting and communicating with people. And trying to help the department and faculty and students overcome the challenges that they face. I experience personal satisfaction from helping people. 

Q: What changes have you made or seek to make in the psychology department?

Oh gosh, we’ve done a number of things. I think some of our policy changes have made things more accessible for students. When I came on, I made some changes to the way we communicate. We started using the canvas advising page that hopefully reaches all of our students. We set up some Microsoft Teams, we also set  up an email that goes out to all of our staff and faculty, so that you can just do one email address and send the communication out to the group…we also have worked in partnership with all of those entities in getting the comprehensive gift funds, and that has really enabled us to do some of the programs that we've launched and has helped  get started with those initiatives, so yeah, it's been an exciting three years.

Q: If you could give students who may want to go into psychology work some advice, what advice would you give them?

I think it would be helpful to know what kind of career paths there are in psychology. Psychology touches on a lot of different areas, because there's problem solving, critical thinking, which are in a lot of different subject areas, but we focus on incorporating research into the undergraduate program, but I think  kind of knowing what they're going to learn will help them in knowing their path.

Q: What is your favorite comfort movie?

I like all Jane Austen movies. I’ve read the books a lot of times, so I like to watch the different versions of movies. 

Q: On a “no responsibilities” day, what do you find yourself doing?

At work or  just kind of out and about at work. If I have more free time I will read. I’ll read articles about whatever’s going on in higher ed, or catch up on emails…I like to take walks so I’ll go walk around campus and come back.