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Southwestern Regional Fall Letter (2007) October 2007 Dear Psi Chi Chapter Officers, Members, and Faculty Advisors, Welcome back to the 2007-2008 academic year! Please distribute this Newsletter to any of your members who are considering submitting a paper to SWPA. THANKS! The Southwestern Region of Psi Chi has had a refreshing year. Former Psi Chi Southwestern Vice-President John Davis is now the Past President of Psi Chi, former regional committee member Lauren Scharff (of the very active Stephen F. Austin State University chapter) is now President-elect of SWPA itself (Congratulations!) and I am entering my fourth year as a Vice-President—wiser and (hopefully!) growing ever more effective. During April 2007, Psi Chi offered a very interesting program at the Southwestern Psychological Association (SWPA) Convention in Ft. Worth, TX to the many Psi Chi faculty advisors and chapters in attendance. The Psi Chi program included two undergraduate research paper and poster sessions in which 12 Psi Chi students won $3,600 of research awards. Other highlights of the program were a variety of distinguished Psi Chi invited speakers, including John Gray of Boston College, who gave a fascinating presentation on his studies of a school in suburban Boston which has no predetermined course of study. Students from kindergarten through high school determine their own curriculum! As you might expect, this drew a large number of participants to the follow-up hour-long discussion with Dr. Gray. An innovation in 2005, Psi Chi is continuing invitations to our Invited Speaker to sit down one-on-one with Psi Chi members in the Psi Chi Hospitality Suite after his/her presentation for a wide-ranging discussion of topics related to the address. With the permission of the elected officers of SWPA, we also invited one of the SWPA featured speakers (Alice W. Eagly of Northwestern University) to discuss her work in developmental psychology with us after her SWPA Invited Address. Psi Chi was also pleased with the presence of (then President of Psi Chi) John M. Davis, Texas State University–San Marcos, and Psi Chi’s Executive Officer, the newly appointed Lisa Mantooth, who performed very admirably in keeping us all on schedule and well nourished through the Psi Chi Suite. She will join us again (at her request, this time) THIS year. We have already gotten a commitment from a major internationally known psychologist as this year’s Psi Chi Distinguished Speaker. All that I’ll tease you with now is that our speaker next April was a featured, front-cover subject in Time within the last couple of years. It will be a very challenging talk for all of us! Come join us! We’ll provide more details in our next Newsletter. Psi Chi at SWPA, Kansas City, KS: Psi Chi's 79th Anniversary and SWPA's 54th—The Papers Could Be Even BIGGER Than 2007! We are planning a wide range of Psi Chi events for the SWPA meeting in the Westin Crown Center Hotel, April 3-5, 2008. You’ve got plenty of time to get back to do your taxes after Psi Chi at SWPA! Plan to bring a large group from your campus. Since Kansas City is quite a distance from the geographic center for Psi Chi’s southwest region, it might be beneficial to partner with another chapter (or two) to pool your transportation. Recognizing cost is always a factor for undergraduates, chapters in the cities near the outer edges of our territory might use the PsiChiSW Listserv (PsiChiSW@listserv.uh.edu) or check the Psi Chi Chapter Directory at www.psichi.org/chapters/search.asp to contact chapters by state or ZIP Code. Clicking on a chapter's name reveals the chapter’s address, office information, and a wealth of detail. You might contact chapters between your school and Kansas City. By renting a bus at the furthest campus, costs might be shared with other campuses along the route to Kansas City. Prorated costs could be paid by Psi Chi members hitching a ride on the same bus if chapters coordinated their efforts. On a related note, despite the cost, there are benefits to staying in the conference hotel. The cost per room is identical at $139 with 1-4 persons in the room; obviously, partnering with someone with similar sleeping habits can generate substantial savings. Moreover, there are many advantages to staying in the convention hotel: Psi Chi paper sessions, nationally prominent speakers (TBA), paper and poster sessions, and social events of the SWPA convention will all be available including the infamous Psi Chi Hospitality Suite. I Need your HELP! I am considering doing a two-hour session for Psi Chi members and advisors on gaining admission to graduate school. Is that a topic in which you would be interested, and if so, is there someone at your school who can do a great job talking about some aspect of this topic? Is there anyone whom you’ve heard in our area who would lend valuable information to this topic? If so, please email me the details (and name!) at Kasschau@uh.edu and Thanks! Psi Chi Undergraduate Research Competition at SWPA SWPA provides a remarkable opportunity to present your research. Begin now to prepare your research for presentation during the Psi Chi program at the 54th SWPA meeting in Kansas City. All Psi Chi members’ submissions are automatically considered for the Psi Chi competition as long as you follow the guidelines included with this letter and identify yourself as a member of Psi Chi! I have been pressing all four years to extend the SWPA submission deadline for Psi Chi applicants. With extensive help from Ed Kardas of Southern Arkansas University and SWPA President-elect Lauren Scharff, we have made major progress. The deadline for submitting your work for review in the SWPA Undergraduate research competition and the SWPA submission deadline for members is Monday, November 5, 2007 which is quite early. Dr. Kardas has worked closely with us and we are now able to extend the Psi Chi submission deadline to Monday, December 3, 2007. That’s four weeks additional submission time for Psi Chi members only! So Dr, Scharff’s and my work toward extending Psi Chi’s deadline has yielded a significant extension for you this year. The submission process for your paper or poster is as follows: 1) Apply for SWPA student membership if you are not a member already. Do this as soon as possible. You can obtain membership information and application forms at www.swpsych.org. ALL authors of papers presented at SWPA must be members of SWPA, but only the lead author of papers submitted for the Psi Chi sessions needs to be a member when the paper or poster is submitted. The other authors can apply before the convention and pay their first-year dues at the convention next April, but apply today! 2) Submit your paper or poster proposal to SWPA electronically no later than midnight Monday, December 3rd—a four week extension past the SWPA deadline! This extended deadline is courtesy of SWPA. The submission is achieved through the following steps: (a) Contact www.swpsych.org, to reach the Home Page of SWPA. For non-members, there are several pages of information including how to become a member, as well as Submission Instructions, and an access point to apply for membership. (b) Student members of SWPA submitting papers for the Psi Chi competition should enter through the “Call for Papers” button, and within that enter through the “LOGIN” button with their Login word and password. That is, the student submitting a paper for the Psi Chi competition and paper/poster sessions must already be a member of SWPA—but it’s EASY to join! Continuing, (c) On the left side of the SWPA Home Page, under “Presentations for the 54th Annual Convention in 2008” select “Submit or Edit”. (d) Select ”Submit a Presentation”. The following information is adapted directly from the SWPA site: The Organization for which this presentation is being submitted: As a student member of Psi Chi, on this pulldown menu, make sure you select Psi Chi—The National Honor Society in Psychology. This does NOT preclude you from being judged in the SWPA Research Competition. That choice is made later. (e) You need a Presentation Title (10 words or less in APA style): “The Effect of A on B” (f) You should select your Presentation Format: IF you (1) will let the SWPA reviewers select whether your submission is to be a talk or a poster, if you (2) are submitting a poster or (3) a talk in the Psi Chi competition only, you should select “Poster or Talk”, “Poster only”, or “Talk only” on this pulldown menu. When you do so, you will notice the right-hand pulldown menu is automatically set to “Not Competition”—which is fine. It means you are NOT submitting to the SWPA Competition, but as a member of Psi Chi your submission WILL be reviewed in the Psi Chi competition. IF you are a member of Psi Chi who is entering a paper or talk for the SWPA Research Competition, under Presentation Format you should select “SWPA Undergraduate” or “SWPA Graduate” on this same right-hand pulldown menu. (g) If and only if you select the (SWPA) “Research Competition” option, you must then (and only then) pull down the right-hand menu to indicate Type of “Research Competition—that is, which of the two SWPA Research Competitions are you entering (as described in “f” just above)? Otherwise leave the right-hand button alone. Whether submitting a poster or a paper, after your paper is reviewed by SWPA, it will be reviewed by Psi Chi. (h) Select the two most broadly descriptive topic areas that apply to your proposed presentation. The “Printable Listing” window suggests almost 70 possibilities for you. Pick the two best. And don’t worry that two other lists pull down with this one—you’ve already made those other decisions above. (i) Listing your Authors seems tricky, but it is designed to insure accuracy. Enter your first author by clicking “Find Author 1” which automatically opens a “Find a SWPA Member” window. Beware that sometimes this window appears without disturbing it behind the SWPA form on which you are working. So, if nothing happens, move the SWPA main form. On the smaller pop-up form, type in the author’s name and then click “Lookup”. In the simplest case, the named Author 1 is then affirmed as having paid his/her dues. (i1) Regardless, once the information appears, click the author’s underlined name in the “Find a SWPA Member” window, and the name and institutional affiliation of that person appears in your list of authors. Repeat for each author as necessary, but remember that to be eligible for the Psi Chi Competition, only Psi Chi students who are (going to become) members of SWPA can be listed. No faculty names should appear in this list, because this is a student competition. (i2) Designate one member of the author team as the presenter by clicking the “Designate as Presenter” button to the right of the team member who will present the paper. The Presenter must already be a student member of SWPA. (i3) The required information for the (SWPA Member- Presenter appears automatically in the next block of information as a result of completing Step i2 above. (i4) Identify your Faculty Sponsor for your submission, if you are competing in the SWPA Research Competition, using the same process as in Steps i and i1-i3 above. (j) Presentation Summary. Here you should sell us on your paper or poster. You have 500 words in which to do so. Follow the form for specific instructions if you are submitting a paper. This should be a complete description of your project giving the reviewer (and potential audience members!) as full an understanding as you can convey in 500 words about your project. This is the ONLY information which will be used in making initial decisions about accepting your poster or talk for presentation and for deciding which projects will be given one of the (up to) 12 Psi Chi Awards. NOTE carefully: This program will not spell-check your submission. Write your submission on your own word processing program and then copy it onto the SWPA Submission Form. Please NOTE: To be eligible for the “Psi Chi Competition” among student members, this writing should be entirely student-produced, not co-authored with a faculty member. Every summary must consist of the four following clearly delineated sections: Problem, Method, Results, and Conclusions. Every summary should specify the importance of the problem to the current literature, the procedure used to collect data, the findings of the research, the relevance of the findings to the original problem, and the implications of the research. Obtained data and results must be described in the submission. Do not submit posters for data still being collected or as yet unanalyzed. Authors violating any of these criteria risk outright rejection. However, it is perfectly all right to continue your research, collect and report additional data after your initial submission. (k) Following this form you can request media equipment, but only overhead projectors will be supplied. You will need to supply your own computer and/or computer projector. Even for poster presentations, it is safest to bring your own thumbtacks and/or mounting supplies. (l) Click to SUBMIT THE ABOVE INFORMATION that forwards your submission to SWPA. Notice that you can review and revise your submission until the deadline date. Note: Your proposal will be reviewed for acceptance by at least two reviewers from colleges/ universities in our region. In order to notify award winners prior to their presentations, we will select student research award winners entirely on the basis of the written proposal. It is important to realize that, as you advance in your education, many decisions will be made about you solely on the basis of your written work. So use this opportunity to make your written submission exemplary! Psi Chi will make up to 12 research awards of $300 for student presentations. In addition to these awards, the Psi Chi National Council has authorized the awarding of a limited number of additional awards if our regional association’s submission numbers increase more than other regions. DO submit; we can potentially award additional money! I hope one of this year's awards will be yours. Presentation details. All oral presentations with papers will be for 15 minutes with an additional 5-minute question-and-answer period. Poster size is 30 x 40 inches. As a courtesy to people who attend your paper session or poster session, presenters should have at least 40 copies of handouts or formal papers available for distribution. Again, welcome back! As a student of psychology in the Southwest Region of Psi Chi, you are a valued members of the psychological community. In the coming year, make certain you are a part of the excitement. Please take full advantage of the opportunities that your department and Psi Chi offer you. And remember: It is never too soon to start planning research that will lead to a submission for SWPA 2009! I look forward to meeting you in Kansas City! Sincerely, Richard A. Kasschau, Professor and Southwest Region Vice-President, Psi Chi |
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