Our facilities include a variety of labs, conference and seminar rooms, along with a Child Development Lab in Billy Graham Hall. We also have an Animal Research Laboratory in the Meyer Science Building. Sensation/perception work and human research (such as social or personality psychology) can take place in the Vautin Memorial Laboratory.
Some examples of equipment and programs used include:
- rodent modular and 8-arm radial mazes
- animal housing facilities for over 100 rats
- operant chambers
- SMART behavioral tracking software
- cryostat for sectioning frozen tissue specimens
- fluorescent microscope
- digital microscopy imaging system
- computer simulation/human experimentation
- computer stations with SuperLab, Inquisit and SSP software
Robert G. Vautin Memorial Laboratory
Dr. Robert (Bob) Vautin (June 11, 1936 - March 16, 2001) was a Psychology faculty member at Wheaton College from 1986-2001. A New Jersey native, he served in the Navy from 1954-1958 and received his doctorate in Psychology from Florida State University. Prior to coming to Wheaton, he worked as a researcher at the State University of New York at Buffalo where he was involved in single-cell recording in the macaque monkey visual cortex.
During his time at Wheaton, Dr. Vautin served the campus by teaching courses in Introductory Psychology, Sensation and Perception, History of Psychology, and Experimental Psychology, and by serving as faculty advisor to the program's chapter of Psi Chi. It was his commitment to the ethical treatment of animals in research which led to his chairing the college's Animal Care and Use Committee and maintaining the animal learning laboratory in the School of Psychology, Counseling and Family Therapy.
In addition to his scholarly activities as a researcher in the area of color vision, Dr. Vautin modeled a spirit of humility and faith to his students and colleagues. Diagnosed with a rare and aggressive brain tumor during the fall of 2000, he passed away nearly 6 months after the diagnosis of his cancer. In the wake of his passing, in the fall of 2002, the School of Psychology, Counseling, and Family Therapy renamed the laboratory in which he spent a significant portion of his time in his honor.