I served as president of Div. 20 from 2017-2018. One of my main presidential initiatives was and is to ensure the sustainability of Div. 20 in the face of ongoing membership challenges. To this end, the Div. 20 Executive Committee created the Division 20 Fund, or the D20 Fund. The D20 Fund will provide support to graduate students and early-career psychologists to build and sustain early career development activities (e.g., the Early Career Task Force Mentoring Program, Special Interest Groups) as well as offer travel stipends, awards and similar initiatives to better engage the future of Div. 20.
The Executive Committee of Div. 20 agreed to establish a fund for Div. 20 in the fall of 2017 to seed an initial $20,000 to ultimately result in a $100,000 endowment fund. As you can see below, we are approximately halfway towards this goal.
The D20 Fund will eventually support a number of early career outreach efforts, including support for graduate student, post-doctoral and junior faculty travel and research awards. I think many of us point to Div. 20 as an important professional home that has helped each of us to build and advance our understanding of adult development and aging, and the goal of the D20 Fund is to share such support with current and future early career psychologists with similar professional interests.
For me personally, Div. 20 has served as an important anchor that allows me to continue to identify with my intellectual roots as a psychologist although my academic affiliations have ranged from nursing to public health. I wanted to give similar opportunities to other early career psychologists to call Div. 20 “home,” and I think the Fund can help to do that.
We would be thrilled if you considered donating to the fund. I personally have pledged to donate $10,000 over the next five years, and many other past presidents and other leading scholars in adult development and aging have agreed to donate $2,500 over the next five years as well as other amounts. If you are interested in contributing, hearing more or if there is anything else I can do to facilitate your support of the D20 Fund, please feel free to contact me, Joe Gaugler, PhD, via email or telephone, (612) 626-2485.
If you are ready to donate now, please feel free to complete the D20 Fund Pledge Form online or contact the American Psychological Foundation (APF) for a printable version their donation form. If you are giving online, please specify that your donation is for the Division 20 Fund, and please know that online you will not be able to make a pledge but will only be able to give a one-time gift. If you are donating using the APF form, please follow the instructions to designate the amount, duration/frequency of your pledge and source of your pledge. Simply return the completed form the American Psychological Foundation as directed.
We thank you so much for considering to support early career psychologists of Div. 20.
Sincerely,
Joe Gaugler, PhD
Past-President, Div. 20 (2017-2018)