Professional Summary
Dr. John Silva is a Professor of Sport Psychology in
the Department of Exercise and Sport Science at the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill. He is trained in sport psychology, receiving his Ph.D. from the
University of Maryland. Dr. Silva has published 50 plus articles, over 35 of
which are research-based and appear in noted journals. He is co-editor of the
widely-used text "Psychological Foundations of Sport" and is currently writing a
graduate text on training sport psychologists.
Dr. Silva is the founding president of the Association for the
Advancement of Applied Sport Psychology (AAASP), a scholarly association
with an international membership of over nine-hundred sport psychologists.
He served as the inaugural editor of the "Journal of Applied Sport
Psychology", the first nonproprietary sport psychology journal in the United
States. Dr. Silva's research interests include psychometrics in sport,
performance enhancement, cognitive intervention, psychology of the elite
athlete, precompetitive affect, violence in sport and training stress.
Discussion of his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington
Post, Psychology Today, NCAA News, The Chronicle of Higher Education, in
several National wire releases and on National television (NBC and ABC
Sports). He is a fellow in AAASP and a member of the American Psychological
Association.
Dr. Silva has spoken and conducted workshops regionally, nationally and
internationally on various sport psychology topics. Some of his invited lectures
include the 1984 Olympic Scientific Congress held in conjunction with the Los
Angeles Games, the 1985 World Sport Psychology Congress in Copenhagen, Denmark,
a series of invited lectures in Sweden, the 1988 Olympic Scientific Congress in
Seoul, South Korea, and the 1995 International Congress for Sport Science in
Komotini, Greece. During June of 1989, Dr. Silva was a member of the first
official delegation of North American sport psychologists invited to lecture and
tour East German and Soviet sport psychology institutes. In November 1990, Dr.
Silva was selected as one of three sport psychologists invited to address the
Spanish Olympic Organizing Committee and the Spanish National Governing Bodies
in Madrid, Spain on the topic of sport psychology in the 1992 Olympics. In 1991
he was awarded the first Distinguished Graduate Alumni Award from the College of
Health and Human Performance at the University of Maryland.
Dr. Silva has served as a sport psychology consultant for athletes and teams
at the professional, Olympic and collegiate levels for 19 years. He has served
on the Sports Medicine Committee for the United States Team Handball Federation
since 1987 and in 1995 was appointed to chair the Federation's Sport Science and
Technology Committee which oversees sport science service provision for the
National and Olympic teams. He has provided on-site services to athletes at
National and World competitions.
As a sports participant, Dr. Silva has run five marathons and has played on
the Carolina Team Handball Club that won the Bronze Medal at the National
Championships in 1991. He has coached the Women's South Team in the 1993 Olympic
Festival and the Men's South Team which won the Gold Medal in the 1995 Olympic
Festival. He coached 11 former Carolina club members who have trained with the
U.S. Men's National Team and 2 athletes who were members of the 1996 US Olympic
Team.
Dr. Silva is the co-inventor of a United States Patented Interactive Sports
Simulator System designed for scientific and entertainment applications and is
the Director of Carolina Connection Academy, a non-profit organization dedicated
to providing young people life skills training, sport psychology instruction and
technical, sport-specific training.
Send email to: silva@email.unc.edu |
