2003 Cousins National Chapter Award Winner
Representing the Cousins Award-winning chapter from Northern Kentucky University, chapter vice-president Jordan Wagge (right) receives the 2003 Cousins Award from Psi Chi National President Elizabeth Yost Hammer at the 2003 Psi Chi/APA Convention.
How to Become a Successful Psi Chi Chapter
Jordan Wagge
Chapter Vice-President (2002-2003)
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Northern Kentucky University
Winner of the 2003 Cousins National Chapter Award
When our chapter won the first Cousins Award in 1992, we identified four main factors that made us a successful chapter:
- staying committed to the ideals and goals of Psi Chi,
- maintaining a strong sense of community and support for our students,
- fostering a good relationship with professors and the department, and
- being an active honor society on campus.
We continue to focus our efforts toward these factors in order to remain successful as our organization grows. We are a chapter committed to excellence and the nationally recognized goals of Psi Chi, and the elements of success have stayed with us through the years.
First of all, Northern Kentucky University’s Psi Chi chapter has stayed committed to promoting the ideas of Psi Chi. We encourage, stimulate, and maintain excellence in scholarship by inviting all NKU students to our bi-weekly lectures, and by having lectures that are relevant to the field of psychology. We encourage students by bringing in employers and graduate school recruiters and students; we also encourage by having our faculty members outline their research programs for our students at the beginning of each school year. We ensure that our students have ample opportunity to get involved with faculty or individual research projects. We provide stimulating guest speakers; for example, one of our recent lecturers spoke on psychology’s treatment of race, which included controversial discussions of past and present eminent psychologists and clinical practice.
We maintain excellence by not just going to conferences and being active, but by increasing participation in those conferences each year and solidifying our place in the psychological community. When people think of NKU’s Psychology Department and Psi Chi chapter, we want the word excellence to come to mind.
A successful Psi Chi chapter needs a strong sense of community and support among students. We facilitate relationship-building by hosting off campus social events and providing social time during each regular club meeting. Our chapter helps to organize the freshman/transfer student orientation day in August every year, and our members assist with registration of new students at different student university orientations throughout the year. Our officers are accessible to NKU students: the names and e-mail addresses of our officers are available on the website and in the department office. Also, one can very rarely enter the psychology department or the department’s computer lab without finding at least one officer of Psi Chi.
Our officers are students who are highly involved on campus, and at times one wonders if the officers ever go home. Our chapter is also very supportive. For example, one of our newest volunteer projects will be to organize a final exam wake-up call service this semester. Another way we show our strong sense of community is by giving departmental awards at each Spring Psi Chi Induction Ceremony. We do our best to recognize student achievements and to get the department involved with this recognition process. Through fostering a good relationship with professors in the department, and especially the department chair, we have been able to maintain much of our success.
The third element of success in our Psi Chi chapter has been getting the department involved. The professors have been important to our success. We encourage faculty attendance at meetings and events and ask department professors to come in and speak to the club about their research or experience. Many of our faculty members are Psi Chi members and were active in college; we use their experience and knowledge to benefit the excellence of our Psi Chi chapter. Getting professors actively engaged with our students has created an environment of mutual respect and professionalism within our chapter, and has given many of our students a leg up on doing research and attending conferences, along with other obvious advantages.
We also realize that as an active chapter of Psi Chi, we must remain active in campus. We have co-sponsored speakers, attended many university-wide events as a group, and participated in as many campus-wide benefits and services as possible. In order to remain accessible and visible to the student population, any organization must keep itself in the spotlight. Also, participating in campus-wide events has helped us develop good working relationships with other departments and organizations on campus. This, in turn, has led us to achieve even more by having extra support for sponsoring events, advertising events to groups, and having more opportunities to be involved in general.
The NKU chapter of Psi Chi has set an example for other honor societies on campus. While we hold as first principals the goals of Psi Chi, we realize that there are many other practical aspects of running a successful chapter. Officers must be good leaders and aware of their roles, every aspect of our chapter must be well organized, students must be stimulated and encouraged to improve the chapter while bettering themselves, and we must be assertive in obtaining our goals. The key to becoming a successful Psi Chi chapter, in our opinion, is in the philosophy of the organization. With willingness, effort, and knowledge come the opportunity to create an environment in which academics and professionalism may flourish. As a successful chapter of Psi Chi, we recognize and understand our goals, discuss what we must do to reach these goals, and implement and execute a plan of action to achieve them.