Human Relations

Vivian McCann is a senior faculty member in psychology at Portland Community College in Portland, Oregon. Throughout her 25 years of teaching college and university students, she has taught a wide variety of courses, including introductory psychology, human relations, intimate relationships, personality, leadership, and social psychology. Born and raised in the California desert just 10 miles from the Mexican border, she quickly learned the importance of understanding cultural backgrounds and values in effective communication, which laid the foundation for her lifelong interest in teaching and learning psychology from diverse cultural perspectives.

Vivian loves to explore new cultures through travel, and to nurture the same interests in her students. She has led groups of her students on four trips abroad, and in her own travels has visited 35 countries so far. Her most recent adventure took her to Africa for four months, where she volunteered with women in Tanzania, worked with elephants and endangered rhinos in Zimbabwe, and trekked into the mountains of Rwanda to observe gorillas in the wild.

Vivian maintains a strong commitment to teaching excellence and has developed and taught numerous workshops. She has served on the American Psychological Association’s executive committee for Psychology Teachers at Community Colleges (PT@CC) and is an active member of the Western Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. She also co-authors Psychology: Core Concepts with Philip Zimbardo and Bob Johnson. Her most recent passion involves working with The Heroic Imagination Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to teaching people of all ages to stand up, speak out, and develop their own inner heroes in pursuit of a more compassionate world.