Membership news

New membership options

There are two new membership structures (at $15 USD) to help students and International Affiliates join Division 32: Society for Humanistic Psychology. At this price, the students and IAs will receive online access to the journal rather than being mailed a hard copy. Persons who are students include any level of college, graduate school student up to ABD. Once you receive a terminal degree (PsyD or PhD) you should become a “member.” International Affiliates are students (at any level) or professionals living outside of the United States. NOTE: Students in the US who would like a hard copy of the journal (in addition to electronic access) are able to do so for the traditional price of $25. Please see the attached document. This is great news, I hope you will join or pass this on to others who might be interested in joining!

Engaging and helping the next generation: Five initiatives

1. Student Ambassador Program: The purpose of this group is to create a vibrant community of young scholars, practitioners and researchers who are invested in the Humanistic Psychologies (Humanistic-Existential-Constructivist-Transpersonal areas). This group aims to open a line of communication between Humanistic Psychology Graduate programs and Division 32 of the APA: Society of Humanistic Psychology. We have 24 ambassadors from 16 graduate programs that have at least one concentration in one of the humanistic psychologies. This year by selling T-shirts and tote bags with our Division 32 logo (available online) and having a book raffle at the conference, we were able to raise $1000! We were able to distribute $700 to 15 SAs to help them cover costs of traveling to the Annual Division 32 conference. The goal is to provide some assistant to any student ambassador who can make the effort to come to our conference.

2. “Dissertation/Thesis Work at Humanistic Graduate Schools” Poster Presentation: Six Posters were presented in 2011 and this year Student Ambassadors presented ten posters at the 5th Annual Division 32 conference in April of 2012. The posters highlight a number of the research projects being conducted by either doctoral or master students at their institutions. Thus the Ambassadors showcased not only their own projects, but also the work of their fellow graduate students and also included information about their program. Some Ambassadors received grants or travel funds to help defray the cost of attending the conference. So those students learned a little about the grant writing process. More importantly this poster even provides a professional experience for the Student’s vitae and also gives them an opportunity to attend the conference and interact with other student ambassadors as well as some of the faculty of other institutions. For many, the conference offers a chance to meet persons that they have known only virtually through our Facebook pages.

3. Speed Mentoring. This year’s “Speed Mentoring” event took place at the Division 32 Conference in Pittsburgh (March 29-April 1, 2012). This year’s event was packed! Students were able to grab a quick bite of pizza and then visit tables often with two experts at them who spoke on the following topics: Getting into Doctoral Programs, Clinical Internships, Getting Published, Entering Clinical Practice, Choosing a Dissertation Topic/Committee, Joining a Professional Organization, Academia and Psychology. Students could rotate to another table once a bell was chimed after about 7 minutes.

4. The Executive Board of Division 32 has increased the number of committee and taskforce positions open for graduate students. Traditionally, there has been two student positions available on the Board but little else. Task forces, committees and ad-hoc committees formed or reorganized this year successfully added at least one graduate student member per group. The goal is to get to know the students and for their concerns to be represented on the board. We have already seen students who have begun on the Taskforces and then have been added to standing committees. Also, at the APA Convention, the Jourard Award is presented each year to an outstanding student paper!

5. Research Presentation Opportunities. Our own annual conference has really added many opportunities for students to do poster presentation. This year the conference accepted 42 student posters including 14 undergraduate posters and 28 graduate students. There were a number of other posters that also included the work of graduate students and their faculty mentors not incorporated in the above number. In addition, the conference committee added twelve hours of programming for student paper presentations. So 30 students, either singly or together, were able to give 25 talks to students and professionals in their field. We were truly impressed by the depth of knowledge that the students had about their topics. The students seem to both cherish the opportunity to present and also appreciate the great audience turn out for their work.