Northwestern College director of counseling receives Iowa Psychological Association award

Dr. Sally Oakes Edman, director of counseling services at Northwestern College, was named this year’s recipient of the Iowa Psychological Association’s Phil Laughlin Meritorious Achievement Award.

The award is given to honor an IPA member for outstanding service to the association. Edman joined the IPA in 1988 and has since served on the association’s Executive Council and as elected representative for the state on the Council of Representatives of the American Psychological Association. She was president of the IPA in 2001 and chaired its Ethics Committee from October 2009 to March 2011.

Edman—who will have served 20 years at Northwestern before her retirement this month—has spent much of her career in rural Iowa, working in areas where she was the sole licensed psychologist. She was among the first 600 psychologists to be licensed in the state and was one of the first 200 psychologists to be licensed as health service providers.

A clinical psychologist, Edman has worked in a private practice, college counseling centers and for the Mayo Clinic. She earned master’s and doctoral degrees in counseling psychology from the University of Notre Dame.