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Dr. Connie Kendall Varnhagen (born 16 December ) is an American professor of psychology and academic director of the undergraduate research initiative at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta. Her research has centred on around how children, adolescents and adults develop and use cognitive strategies.

She was previously an associate professor of psychology at the University of Alberta for 11 years from 1993 until she became a professor of psychology in 2004.

As of 2009, she is also a qualified veterinary technician after gaining this qualification from a veterinary technology distance learning program with San Juan College. Since June 2012, she also works as a technician and researcher with the Edmonton Humane Society's "Prevent Another Litter" program, which is trying to combat pet overpopulation in Alberta by neutering and spraying household pets to stop them from breeding , alongside her duties at the University of Alberta.

Background
Varnhagen grew up in Evanston, Illinois where she attended the Evanston Township High School, a public school in her home town, before going on to study psychology at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology in 1977. It is here where she met her husband to be, Stanley Varnhagen, whom she would go on to marry a year after graduating in December 1978. Her husband also works at the University of Alberta as an academic director. At Kenyon College, Varnhagen was awarded with both the Psychology award and the Humanitarian award in 1977.

Education
Having been awarded with an honours degree in psychology, Varnhagen went on to study for a Master's degree in psychology at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, which she was awarded in 1980. After this, she was awarded a PhD in Psychology at UC Santa Barbara in 1985. Her thesis for her PhD was on Text relations and prose comprehension.

Publications
Varnhagen has published one book, Making Sense of the Web (ISBN 0716753596) in April 2002, which is described by Amazon as a "brief text is a guide to finding, evaluating, and using electronically accessed sources in introductory and advanced courses within the psychology curriculum".

She has also co-authored several books with other researchers including Don H. Hockenbury, Sandra E. Hockenbury, Cornelius Rea, Peter O. Gray, Thomas Ludwig, David G. Myers, Kathleen Stassen Berger amongst others on different topics such as the development of a person from childhood through to adolescence and psychology study guides.

Awards
Varnhagen has won several awards for teaching including the 3M National Teaching Fellow, an exclusive honour only bestowed upon the top university professors in Canada. She was also awarded both the Psychology and Humanitarian awards in 1977 from Kenyon College.

Other awards include the Interdepartmental Science Students Society Professor Appreciation Award, Rutherford Award for Undergraduate Teaching in 2010, Faculty of Arts Teaching Award in 2003 and Department of Psychology Teaching Award in 1994. These four awards were all awarded by the University of Alberta.