A message from the past-president

The division past-president fondly recalls his time in office including his facilitating the division awards process, launching an aggressive member recruitment program, and encouraging members to attend the North American Correctional and Criminal Justice Psychology Conference

By Robert Morgan, PhD

My friend and fellow division Past-President Robert (Bob) Goldberg always told me the best year in office is the year as Past-President. I confess that as I sat in a chair near the end of the convention social hour, the feeling of handing over the reins to Steve could not have felt better and I began to see the wisdom in Bob’s message. That said, I am proud of the work we accomplished during my year as President and I’m eager to continue work on new initiatives and to assist Steve as he moves the division forward.

As you undoubtedly know by now, my primary objective was to increase membership and the Executive Committee helped me develop an aggressive recruitment program. Although I do not have the complete results of this program at the time of this writing, I will have a complete report for the next newsletter.

One of my primary tasks as Past-President is to facilitate the award process. By way of reminder, the 2010 Award recipients were:

Outstanding Student Award: Tess Neal (University of Alabama)
Honorable Mention: Shannon Griswold (The School of Professional Psychology at Forest Institute) and Stephanie Bass (University of Toronto)
Early Career Achievement Award: Jarrod Steffan, PhD
Distinguished Career Award: Arthur Lurigio, PhD
Mike Neale Award: William Spaulding, PhD
Harold Hildreth Award: Rodney Baker, PhD

I will begin the 2011 award process in February so please begin considering psychologists you want to nominate for the above awards.

For those with criminal justice and police psychology interests, I strongly encourage you to consider attending the second North American Correctional and Criminal Justice Psychology Conference (NACCJPC) to be held June 2 – 4, 2011 in Toronto Canada. The first NACCJPC (2007) was a huge success and the second conference promises to be even better with even more state of the art programming and an impressive keynote speakers list consisting of a who’s who of criminal justice psychologists (i.e., Joel Dvoskin, Karl Hanson, Sheilagh Hodgins, Jennifer Skeem, and Paula Smith). Mark your calendars and plan to attend this exciting event.

Although we remain an active and vibrant division we are in need of member involvement. I hope 2011 can be a year of unparalleled member involvement. We have a lot of new members in the division and now is a great time to get involved. Please contact Steve Norton or me if you would like to pursue opportunities for greater involvement.

A Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all.