Time has been passing rather quickly as we’ve continued to live and work in a kind of social limbo, with more and more of our normally face-to-face interactions being conducted via video platforms. Behind the scenes, the STPP Executive Committee has been at work making plans for the coming convention as well as filling vacant positions on our various committees and holding side meetings of the finance committee to plan for our future. Some have been involved in interdivisional work involving a CODAPAR grant working on behalf of the welfare of immigrants.
Nowhere in our division’s activities has the pandemic been felt more acutely than in the replacement of our in-person convention programming with pre-recorded symposia and only very few “live” business meetings, where presidential and invited addresses were presented to a virtual audience webinar-style. Thanks to the initiative of our 2020 Program Chair Erin Thrift, our summer Hospitality Suite programming was able to continue into the fall and winter with monthly Wednesday afternoon webinar sessions that were attended by many of our members. Meanwhile, our plans to join with another society (ISTP) for a combined spring conference this year were put on hold due to the pandemic. At the current moment, we only have our upcoming convention programming as well as our early career speaker series on our agenda for membership involvement.
Convention program
Div. 24's Presidential Theme for the annual convention is "An Ethical Call to Compassion and Action: Addressing Theory and Philosophy to Social and Environmental Justice, Well-Being, and Flourishing." This was presented as an open-ended call for submissions that would engage with pressing ethical issues, employing relevant theoretical or philosophical orientation with an eye to real-life implications. Our 2021 Program Chair Snjezana Huerta will be presenting more about our summer convention program in her own message in this newsletter.
Early career speaker series
The idea behind this series was to develop a mentoring program where early career psychologists, including graduate students, would present their work in webinar format while a more senior member of the Society would be invited to reply in a helpful way.
STPP kicked off our new “Early Career Speaker Series” webinar series at the end of March with an engaging presentation by Basia D. Ellis, PhD, assistant professor of child and adolescent development at California State University, Sacramento, on “The Psychology of Immigrant Illegality” with her former mentor Thomas Teo serving as discussant.
The idea behind these pairings is to engender more interaction and cross-fertilization between these two constituencies within the Society, with hopes of having our webinars continue throughout the year. We hope to be able to announce another webinar session very soon. Anyone interested in stepping forward to volunteer in either capacity should write directly to me.
Student and Early Career Psychologist Committee
While on the topic of early career members of the Society, I would like to announce that our newest member of the Student and Early Career Psychologist Committee is Jacklyn Corsitto, first year student representative, who is joining Suraj Sood, second year student representative, and Chase O’Gwin, early career representative, on this Committee. And another early career member of the Society has stepped up to be our newsletter editor, Ayurdhi Dhar.
Meanwhile, Justin Karter has been keeping the Society’s Listserv alive as chair of the Communications Committee, as well as doing a lot of behind the scenes work to assist me as president, for which I am truly grateful.
Fellows Committee
We are beginning to constitute a new Fellows Committee with Hendrika Vande Kemp responding to last fall’s call for volunteers to serve on the committee. We still need two more members and one to assume the position of chair. Please write to me directly if you would be willing to assist the Society in honoring its more distinguished members by vetting nominations for fellow status in Div. 24.
Membership Committee
Bethany Morris has stepped up to assume the chair position of our Membership Committee, with Aramis D. M. Valverde joining as a committee member this year, and Dennis Wendt staying on through this summer for continuity as our third member. We wish to thank Dennis for his service as our outgoing membership chair and also welcome our new team, which will include Cacky Mellor coming on board after the August convention.
Speaking of our members, it is important for you to know that the Executive Board is here to represent you, our constituency, and we want you to be stakeholders in everything that we do, because all of the work conducted behind the scenes by the Executive Board is done on your behalf. We are engaged as Board in creating a Society in which we ourselves, as members of the Society, would like to be a part, but we would like to do this with the input of the broadest range of our membership. That is why we have three elected members-at-large–for the purpose of representing the membership in all Executive Board deliberations. Any one of you reading this who would like to be a part of the Society’s governance, should please contact me or anyone on the Board to express your interest. Likewise, anything that is important to you as members, please communicate to one of our elected members-at-large or directly to any officer. In that way, at any of our next Board meetings, we can raise issues that represent your concerns. So, please consider this an appeal for your input. A connected membership is a viable membership. In similar fashion, we invite your participation in our newsletter and in our journal.
Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (JTPP)
Speaking of the journal, we would like to welcome our two new co-editors, Bruce Jennings and James Cresswell, to the masthead. You can read about their vision for the journal in the Editor Spotlight.
I would like take this moment to express a personal note of gratitude to our outgoing Editor-in-Chief Brent Slife, who has served the journal even prior to its inception as a journal—first as associate editor and then taking over the editorship from founding editor Fred Wertz in 1989 (Volume 9) and working to upgrade what had been a bulletin (since the time of Fred’s editorship) to a full-fledged journal commencing with Volume 13, with Brent continuing on through Volume 17. Brent later returned to the helm for Volumes 35 through 40, for a total of 15 years as editor, while serving as a consulting editor in the intervening years. Brent, we owe you our sincere thanks for all of your years of service to the Society, not only as our editor and former president, but as one of our luminaries.
Finance Committee
During this academic year we have been engaging in a rather intensive review of our division finances, including a review of our assets and how they may be best invested, and coming up with a strategic financial plan that would be more of a set of guidelines to be considered in establishing priorities for our expenditures. The question of how much of our revenues should go into savings and how much should go into operating expenses will be based on our collective values with regard to the idea of building a set of assets that can become a basis for annual operating expenses. To get the ball rolling, I called a couple of virtual meetings of the Finance Committee (Joe Ostenson, Amy Fisher Smith, Fred Wertz, Mary Beth Morrissey, and myself ex officio) to work out a list of concerns and proposals for the board as a whole to consider.
Society archives
We are in the process of sifting through all available new files to create an electronic division archive in the form of a Dropbox, with special thanks to our secretary, Stephanie Swales, for taking on this initiative. I would also like to thank Stephanie for her updating of our records, including our roster of officers and committee members and chairs, as well as taking care of the scheduling of our various EC and Finance committee meetings over the course of the year. I have felt more secure in my role as president knowing that Stephanie has been watching my back.
Div. 24 Handbook for Officers and Committees
I’ve called upon all officers and committee chairs involved in governance for the division to begin writing down operational definitions of their roles. The idea here is to begin work on a kind of procedures Handbook as a repository of the wisdom of those who have gone before, and a guide for those coming into the positions down the line.
Election slate
I am happy to report that we have a full slate of two candidates for each available executive committee position: Olga Louchakova-Schwartz and David Goodman are running for president in the upcoming election, and Justin Karter and Gary Senecal will be running for member-at-large. Their candidate statements will appear in the APA ballot, which should appear in your email very soon.
A final “shout out”
I want to thank Mary Beth Morrissey for her successful completion of her participation in last year’s CODAPAR grant to assess the status and safety of immigrants in the United States, culminating in the production of a letter, “Call to Ensure Detained Immigrants and Refugees’ Right to Health and Public Health Protections, Human Rights, and Alternatives to Detention”opens in new window (PDF, 200KB). The letter calls attention to “serious concerns about the lack of oversight and other systematic failures that have significantly contributed to documented medical neglect and violations of dignity, health and human rights of detained immigrants and refugees, including pregnant women, mothers, and children and adolescents, who have migrated to the United States (some of whom are seeking asylum including political asylum) and are being held in U.S. detention centers.”
I would like to commend Alan Tjeltveit for his work as our liaison to the APA Ethics Committee, in leading our division’s response to the call for input into the latest revision of the APA Code of Ethics.
Finally, a special thanks to Brent Slife, this time for his tireless work on the new Routledge “focus” series on Advances in Theoretical and Philosophical Psychologyopens in new windowthat has featured the work of many scholars in our Society. So far, 15 volumes have appeared between 2019 and 2021.
Wishing you all a safe and fruitful year ahead.
About the Author
Scott D. Churchill, PhD, has been a professor of psychology at the University of Dallas for 40 years, where he previously served as chair and founding director of the master’s program in Existential-Phenomenological Psychology. A fellow of the American Psychological Association in Divs.1, 5, 24, 32, and 56 and past president of Div. 32 (the Society for Humanistic Psychology), Churchill currently serves as editor-in-chief of The Humanistic Psychologist, and as president of Div. 24 (the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology). He has been a member of Div. 24 since 1983, active on the editorial board since its inception, and has served previously as secretary-treasurer. He is joined at the University of Dallas by Div. 24 Former Treasurer Amy Fisher-Smith and current Secretary Stephanie Swales.