Student Events at the APS 20th Annual Convention

The winners of the Student Research and RiSE-UP Awards during the convention’s Opening Ceremony.

The APS 20th Annual Convention featured a full slate of student-oriented events organized by the APS Student Caucus (APSSC) Board, in collaboration with the APS staff and student-affiliate members. The program included events that highlighted student research, disseminated valuable information about graduate school and publishing, and provided the opportunity to network with top researchers and fellow students.

The APSSC would like to thank the student affiliates, volunteers, former APSSC Membership & Volunteers Officer Michaela Bucchianeri, and APS staff members who helped to make these events possible. In addition, the APSSC is grateful to the distinguished APS members who participated in these events, sharing their knowledge and experience with students. If you were unable to be with us in Chicago or missed an event, be sure to go check out the handouts from each event on the APSSC website at www.psychologicalscience.org/apssc/convention/. Planning is already underway for the 2009 programs in San Francisco, so make your plans to be there!

APSSC Convention Kickoff
and Student Social

Chair: Lisa Hasel

The 2008 Convention Kickoff and Student Social was a huge success. Over 250 student affiliates attended the event, making it the largest Student Social in APSSC’s recorded history. Attendees had the opportunity to meet fellow students while enjoying free food and drinks at Lizzy McNeil’s, a pub located next to the Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers. The gathering also allowed the APSSC Board to introduce themselves and provide information about the upcoming student events at the convention.

Champions of Psychology

Chair: Andrew Butler

The Champions of Psychology event continues to be one of the most popular APSSC events at the annual convention. The year’s event featured a stellar group of Champions including Gordon Bower, Susan Goldin-Meadow, Robert W. Levenson, Elizabeth Loftus, Henry L. Roediger, III, and Richard Thompson. Student affiliates had the unique opportunity to sit down in an informal setting with these major figures in psychology and discuss scientific and professional issues.

How to Get Published: Guidance From Journal Editors Chair: Kelli Vaughn-Blount

The 2008 How to Get Published Panel offered something a little different this year: Elaine Walker and Randolph Smith, two distinguished journal editors, participated alongside Paul Dukes, the first ever book publisher to participate in the panel. The Chicago panel offered suggestions on how to get theoretical, meta-analysis, and teaching of psychology articles published in journals as well as how to prepare a book proposal for submission. The overall theme of the session was publishing opportunities that students often miss. Be sure to check out the convention events page on the APSSC website for copies of the handouts and presentations from the panel.

Student Research Award Addresses

Chair: Ewa Szymanska

The 2008 Student Research Award Addresses at the Chicago convention featured four examples of the kind of outstanding research conducted by APSSC members. Approximately 200 peer-reviewers selected winners of the 2008 APS Student Research Award. The panel featured award winners Matthew W. Gallagher, University of Kansas, who argued for an integration of the models of hedonic, eudaimonic, and social wellbeing into a hierarchical structure; Julie L. Hall, University of Michigan, demonstrated the influence of affect on financial decision making; Emmanuel P. Espejo, University of California, Los Angeles, suggested that maternal anxiety and depressive symptoms moderate a link between neuroticism and the serotonin transporter polymorphism (5-HTTLPR) in early adulthood; and Marci S. DeCaro, Miami University, concluded with a discussion of the think-aloud approach to alleviating the effects of performance pressure on mathematical problem solving.

RiSE-UP (Research on Socially and Economically
Underrepresented Populations) Award

Chair: Shu-wen Wang

The 2008 RiSE-UP Research Award Symposium showcased the research of award winners: Nicholas Aramovich, University of Illinois, Chicago; Melody Manchi Chao, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; DeLeon Gray, The Ohio State University; and Igor Grossmann, University of Michigan. The winners were chosen by a panel of student reviewers from a record number of submissions this year, reflecting the increasing excellence and awareness of student research on socially and economically underrepresented populations. Addresses covered a wide range of topics, including group stereotype threat in women, essentialist theories of race, condom negotiation efficacy in low-income youth, and dialectical reasoning in older adulthood.

Chicago was the best-attended RiSE-UP Research Award Symposium to date; audience members initiated many interesting questions and conversations with the award winners.

The Naked Truth: Getting Into Graduate School:
Strategies for Survival and Success

Chair: Katie O’Neill

This year’s Getting into Graduate School event included an eclectic array of panelists from various stages and programs within psychological science. Panel members included: DeLeon Gray, The Ohio State University; Natalie Homa, Baldin-Wallace College; Marci DeCaro, Miami University; Christie Spence, Washington University in St. Louis; and Mark Sheskin, Yale University. Panelists answered a plethora of questions from the primarily undergraduate audience including navigating the transition between undergraduate and graduate training, requesting letters of recommendation, conducting research, and obtaining entry-level graduate assistantships.

The Naked Truth: Deciphering Graduate School, Research,
Coursework, Teaching, and Life

Chair Ewa Szymanska

This student-only event featured highly successful grads who shared the knowledge, skills, and tricks that have come in handy in graduate school. Panelists included Stephen M. Schueller, University of Pennsylvania; Jennifer Willard, Iowa State University; Carmen McLean, University of Nebraska (also an intern at the University of Chicago Medical Center); and Nathan Rose, Washington University in St. Louis. Each discussed how to “navigate” advisors, balance the research/coursework/teaching/life quadrangle, and sail through the clinical internship application process all while enjoying the ride from start to finish. The invaluable advice included, among other things, internalizing the phrase “good enough” when trying to balance graduate school commitments and realizing the tremendous value of academic advice offered by mentors (provided that a student takes time to understand their advisor’s mentoring style and learns how to ask for guidance).

The Naked Truth: Life After the PhD

Chair: Andrew Butler

The final panel in the Naked Truth series featured psychologists who have followed traditional and non-traditional career paths. The panelists were: 1) Elizabeth Albro, Associate Commissioner, Teaching and Learning Division, National Center for Education Research, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, 2) Douglas N. Dunham, Assistant to the Provost and Interim Director, Office of Assessment, Information, and Analysis, Northwest Missouri State, 3) E. David Klonsky, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University, and 4) Chandra Y. Osborn, Health Services Research Fellow, Healthcare Studies, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University.