Southwestern Regional Fall 2012 Letter
Dear fellow Psi Chi members, chapter officers, and faculty advisors,
I hope all of you are off to a great start this academic year. Here in southeastern Louisiana, we got off to a wet start with Hurricane Isaac coming through the area. All is fine now, although we did miss the first week of classes.
To begin, I want to tell you that I am honored and excited to be your new Psi Chi Regional Vice-President. I will do the best I can to represent the region and to continue to bring quality programming to the regional meeting. I have been a member of the regional steering committee for the past four years, and I plan to continue to make the Psi Chi portion of the regional meeting a roaring success! In this letter, I want to introduce the new steering committee, inform you about the next meeting of the Southwestern Psychological Association and associated Psi Chi events, and tell you about a collaborative research initiative being undertaken by Psi Chi.
Steering Committee
The new regional steering committee is comprised of Dr. Shawn R. Charlton (University of Central Arkansas, now serving his second year) and Dr. Grant Benham (University of Texas–Pan American, now starting his first year). The new student member of the committee is Sarah Stegall, the current chapter president at the University of Texas–Pan American.
Upcoming SWPA Convention
The 59th annual meeting of the Southwestern Psychological Association (SWPA) will be held in Ft. Worth, TX, at the Omni Hotel in the Sundance Square Entertainment District. This upcoming meeting has a slightly different schedule from years past, as it will begin on Friday, April 5, and continue through Sunday, April 7, ending at approximately 3:00 p.m. Much more information can be found on the SWPA website (http://www.swpsych.org/). Information about the convention can be found easily via the menu on the left side of the page. Submission acceptance started October 1 and the final deadline for submitting to the program is the evening of November 30. Instructions for submitting your work to the Psi Chi portion of the convention can be found at: http://www.swpsych.org/conv_guidelines.php. Then follow the link for the guidelines for affiliate organizations (Psi Chi) http://www.swpsych.org/conv_guidelines_affiliate.php. Remember that all accepted submissions to the Psi Chi program are automatically entered into the Psi Chi research competition.
Psi Chi members are eligible to apply for regional travel grants to attend the SWPA convention. Information about travel grants can be found at http://www.psichi.org/Regions/. Select Southwest Travel Grants from the menu on the left side of the page. The deadline to apply for these grants is January 15, 2013.
In addition to the Regional Travel Grants, Psi Chi recently approved Unrestricted Travel Grants to help defray travel costs for graduate and undergraduate students presenting at psychology conferences other than the 6 regional meetings. Details about these are available on the Psi Chi website at http://www.psichi.org/awards/forms/Unrestricted_Travel.aspx. The Unrestricted Travel Grants program awards up to $1,500 with deadline dates of December 5 (spring semester travel) and May 5 (summer travel). Look for updates in Digest emails to all members and on Psi Chi's Facebook page.
The SWPA conference theme is Technology and Psychology, and in keeping with that theme, the Psi Chi Distinguished Speaker will be Dr. Christopher Ferguson of Texas A & M International University. His talk is entitled "Do Angry Birds Make for Angry Children? Re-Examining Video Game Violence After Brown v. EMA.” Dr. Ferguson is a renowned expert on the psychological effects of video gaming, and he will also be available for informal discussion with Psi Chi members following his presentation.
We also will have a presentation by Psi Chi President Dr. Jason Young about finding the right fit for graduate school, and we are developing more events, including sessions about being a successful graduate student, leadership opportunities at various levels of professional development (cosponsored with Psi Beta), graduate school Q & A, plus Psi Chi poster and oral paper presentations of your submitted work.
The Reproducibility Project
Psi Chi is partnering with the Open Science Collaboration to give chapter teams an opportunity to contribute to an open, large-scale, collaborative research project estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Contributing teams conduct replications of published studies following a protocol established by the Open Science Collaboration. Team members earn authorship on the publication of the results aggregated across dozens of replication projects. For more details, please go to www.psichi.org/pdf/PsiChiProjectOSC.pdf.
A couple of other things...
Remember that Psi Chi chapters can earn a Model Chapter Award. In addition to the recognition and honor for the chapter, there is a monetary award of $100. More information (and the criteria) for this award and other chapter awards can be found at http://www.psichi.org/Awards/completelist_awards.aspx#chapter
Lastly, I would like to remind all chapters that they should be engaged in service projects, whether local, regional, national, or international! There are many opportunities at all levels— get involved! Psi Chi’s three Society projects, as well as many other suggestions, are listed at http://www.psichi.org/chapters/serviceprojects.aspx.
I hope to see many of you in Ft. Worth in April! Best wishes for a successful semester or quarter!
Evan L. Zucker, PhD
Psi Chi Southwestern Regional Vice-President
Professor
Department of Psychological Sciences
Loyola University New Orleans
New Orleans, LA 70118 USA
(504) 865-3255
zucker@loyno.edu or southwesternvp@psichi.org