Student Affairs Committee report

Greetings, Div. 19 members:

The Student Affairs Committee (SAC) is proud to present our summer report. As a trainee at the Lowell Vet Center in Massachusetts, I spent the week prior to Memorial Day working with The Mass Military Heroes Fund to plant the 37,000 flags in the Boston Common, including the 231 who have died since 9/11, to remember the men and women from the Commonwealth who have died while serving their country from the Revolution to the present. This field of flags was a stark reminder of the importance of the work we do every day. It is our privilege and honor to play a part in helping our dedicated students realize their goals and care for the service members, friends and families that these flags represent.

As the months before the convention wind down, we are working hard to create a meaningful and exciting convention experience for our students and to advance our online programming. As chair, I am excited to report that we are meeting our goals for 2016 and have a great deal planned for the remainder of the year. It is our goal and privilege to continue to be a part of your development and training.

2016 Midyear Meeting Summary 

In February, Angela, Nate and I attended the Div. 19 midyear Executive Committee (EXCOM) business meeting. For those of you who are relatively unfamiliar with our governance process, the EXCOM meets twice each year, once at APA and once at the midyear meeting, which takes place during the spring of each year. In February, Human Resources Research Organization hosted the midyear meeting at its main office, overlooking the Potomac River in the historic downtown Alexandria, Virginia. The minutes of that meeting (and all meetings, for that matter) are recorded and published in this newsletter, and we encourage you all to read them and stay informed of potential changes and discussions regarding the future of our division. As the meeting notes are rather extensive, I will briefly highlight our planned activities that were approved by the EXCOM.

Student Awards Program

The SAC will continue to offer 12 Student Travel Awards ($750 each) in 2016 to all Div. 19 student members who demonstrate outstanding commitment to advancing the science and practice of military psychology. In addition, the EXCOM voted to approve the continued funding of our two Student Research Grants ($1,500 each). For those unfamiliar with our grants program, the research grants are awarded to our two highest-scoring grant applicants with the option of an additional $750 for recipients to attend the APA convention to present their findings. Please visit our website for annual deadline and application details.

This year has also been the first ever t-shirt contest wherein students have nominated their local chapter to be the recipients of newly created Div. 19 t-shirts. We hope this will serve as a token of our appreciation for all that the students do but also as a way for students to be recognized in their community as they wear their new t-shirts around.

Travel Awards

We would like to celebrate the achievement of the following 12 students who were chosen to receive our $750 Travel Awards for the 2016 APA Annual Convention in Denver, Colorado.

• Aaron Banas, George Washington University
• Cara Blevins, University of North Carolina–Charlotte
• Dominika Borowa, Texas Tech University
• Joshua Camins, Sam Houston State University
• Tiffany Duffing, Fielding Graduate University
• Katie Fry, Fielding Graduate University
• Ryan Hess, Ball State University
• Jeremy Jinkerson, Fielding Graduate University
• Megan O'Shea, Chatham University
• Allison Robbins, Virginia Consortium Program in Clinical Psychology
• Kelsi Rugo, Tennessee State University
• Tiffany Urquhart, Palo Alto State University

Outstanding Student Highlights

Additionally, we would like to highlight our outstanding student members for their exceptional contributions. Below are their respective write-ups by their organizations and students who nominated them.

Aaron Banas (George Washington University)

Aaron is a student at George Washington University. He continues to amaze us with his passion for military training and how he proactively seeks opportunities to serve. This month, Aaron is “hosting a fairly broad training session to get people interested in working with military and veterans and also to increase awareness about military and veteran-related issues.” How awesome is that? And that's not all that we have to look forward to from him. He's already planning on coordinating a regional event in Washington, D.C. later this spring that will be geared toward APA Div. 19 members and students and will be an awesome training opportunity. Way to go Aaron. Thanks for being a great example of what we want from our Give an Hour Student Liaisons. (from Give an Hour's newsletter)

Katie Fry (Fielding Graduate University)

Katie's contributions are all the more amazing considering that she is a first-year student. Her level of participation, her tireless advocacy on our chapter's behalf and her can-do attitude are an example to us all and are a large part why she was nominated for the position of executive officer for the chapter despite being a first-year student. She continues to bring credit to our chapter and is always looking for ways to improve herself.

Lynnea Vis (Adler University)

Lynnea has a longstanding history of military-specific psychology interest, and it is only natural that she has joined Div. 19 at the inception of her doctoral degree. Since then, she has served on the leadership team as a regional representative for the Midwest. Additionally, she is the president of Adler University's Military Psychology Student Organization. She works tirelessly to secure presenters, host events and bring military psychology scholarship to the campus. She intends to join the Armed Forces as a clinical psychologist in the United States Navy.

Webinar Programming

We have been able to successfully present four new webinars in the past several months, including our most-attended online webinar, “Successful Preparation for U.S. Army Internships,” which had 40 participants in Adobe Connect. We also proudly conducted an in-uniform clinical psychology careers webinar involving an active duty ECP member and two senior Div. 19 active duty members. Our hard-charging East Coast representative, Katie Fry, successfully put together an applying for HPSP Scholarships panel. And last, we held a major collaboration with Give an Hour that produced “Introduction to Veterans' Mental Health Issues and Provider Resources.” This was our first hybrid webinar, involving an in-person meeting with providers in the Washington, D.C. area and online connect providers and students from across the country. A big shout-out to Andrew Blatt, PsyD, our moderator; Angela Legner, the in-person host; and our presenters, John Whirley, PhD, and Lashanta Petroski-Ackley, MSW. Recordings of these webinars can found on our website.

We will be continuing our webinar programming by starting our leadership webinar series. It is our hope that we can bring to bear the considerable knowledge and experience of Div. 19 to help our students train and develop as leaders. This role is often overlooked in graduate programs, but it plays a vital part of our identities in psychologists whether we are active duty, Veterans Affairs (VA) or independent practice.

We are working to produce a series of webinars presenting leadership theory, showing applications of leadership in military psychology and creating an online space for exploring leadership as students and future psychologists. If any students or members have interest in being a part of this programing, please email us. The SAC is extremely excited to expand the services we can offer our students and members, and we are proud to offer leadership training.

2016 APA Convention in Denver

This year, the SAC is excited to work with the ECP Committee and Div. 18 (Psychologists in Public Services) to provide you with an exciting mentorship luncheon along with some great presentations and panels. We will have an internship preparation panel with students, ECPs and training directors. We hope that having a mix of professions across the career life span will offer a comprehensive view of the internship process. We will have active duty, civilian Department of Defense and VA psychologists and interns. An informal social hour with panel members and others will follow in the suite. We are also excited to hold our annual Military Research Q + A Panel. Research-interested students will be able to seek out brief mentorship on careers and conducting research. Last, but far from least, we will have a presentation from one of last year's Div. 19 Student Research Award winners, Sarah Carter, who will be presenting on her study: “Interpersonal Mechanisms of Suicide Risk in Service Members: A Daily Diary Study.”

One of the highlights of the convention for us students has been the opportunity to connect and socialize outside of the convention. If you are following Nate Tenhundfeld's excellent work producing our biweekly newsletters, you will notice the exciting opportunities we have available to us while we are out there. We are hoping to utilize the things that really make Denver unique in an effort to provide social events that truly capture the essence of the city; if you have any suggestions for things you would like to see us do collectively while we are out there, please let us know.

Did you know that over 200 different types of beer are brewed every day in Denver? What about that the city of Denver has over 14,000 acres of parkland, making it the largest city park system in the nation? With its over 300 days of sunshine every year, 140-mile panorama of the Rocky Mountains, bike-sharing service and hundreds of miles of trails immediately in or near Denver, we plan on exploring much of the great outdoors. Whether we take a trip up to the infamous Red Rocks Amphitheater, visit the local outdoor shooting range, go on a sunset hike or even a brewery tour or three, the only thing better than the conference itself will be the events and outings we will plan for our time out there. We hope to see you all there.

Early Bird Membership Dues Raffle

As an incentive for renewing your Div. 19 membership early, the SAC will offer a raffle drawing to reimburse the $10 fee for 10 students who renew their membership prior to Dec. 31, 2016. Please visit our website for more details.

Div. 19 Student Website Update

We have endeavored to build and rebuild our website to best serve our student members. Thanks largely to the work of Nate Tenhundfeld, our website has become even more robust and user-friendly. Please take a look at our APA convention and resources pages for upcoming programing. We will keep them updated as we record programming and schedule new ones. Please keep an eye out for our upcoming leadership reading list.

Social Media

Our social media presence has grown to include a separately run Facebook page for the SAC. Regular postings there, on Twitter and in the Div. 19 group have allowed us to establish more of a direct connection with students. We hope to continue to use our social media presence to see what the students are interested in, share pertinent information in a timely manner, and hopefully reach out to students who have an interest in military psychology but do not currently know that we as a community exist. We have already had several social media contests raffling off signed copies of books authored by Div. 19 members and hope to have more exciting giveaways in the future.

The SAC is continually amazed by our students, and we are honored to serve as your division student representatives. We love to hear about all the great work our students are doing and are interested in being notified of any student presentations, publications or projects. Please help us show off your great work by emailing us. Please also email us with feedback, suggestions or specific interests for programming. We always want to hear from our students.

For further information, please contact Kevin O'Leary, MS, 2016 SAC chair.