Galarza, L.

University of Puerto Rico

Prof. Laura Galarza will be visiting the University of Valencia from November 16-29, 2017.  She will be teaching the “Team Building and Team Development Module” of the  “Intervention in Work Psychology” Course of the Erasmus Mundus Work, Organizational, and Personnel Psychology (WOP-P) Master Program and will continue her research on the topic of team development.  Professor Galarza is Associate Professor of Industrial and Organizational Psychology at the University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras Campus.  The University of Puerto Rico (UPR) is an international partner of the University of the Erasmus Mundus (EM) WOP-P Program.  Dr Galarza is the UPR Coordinator for the EM WOP-P.

She obtained her PhD in Industrial-Organizational Psychology at Rice University in Houston, Texas, USA in 2000.  She teaches, conducts research, and has 26 years of experience (17 of them post-doctoral) in Work and Organizational Psychology projects.  Her experience includes 5 years (1996-2001) of work as an Industrial-Organizational Psychologist at the Behavioral Health and Performance Group (BHPG) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Johnson Space Center developing the BHPG System for Astronaut Selection System and was part of the interdisciplinary team of behavioral experts and astronauts who developed the Psychological and Expeditionary (including Team Building and Development) Training for long-duration mission astronauts.

She has consulted in the US and Puerto Rico for private, public and non-profit organizations on a variety of work and organizational psychology projects. Since 2002 she teaches at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) Rio Piedras campus where she has also occupied leadership positions including Academic Senator, Interim Department Chair, Chancellor’s Special Assistant for Strategic Plan Development and Institutional Effectiveness, Industrial-Organizational MA & PhD. Program Coordinator, and Special Assistant to the Vice president of Academic Affairs for accreditation topics.   She has presented her research work at numerous conferences in Puerto Rico, USA, Europe, and Latin America and her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals and in NASA peer-reviewed technical reports.