Attending in person: Sonia Rubens, Paula Fite, Tom Gross, Earl Turner, Amy Damashek, Mirian Ofonedu, Jen Woolard, Liz Gershoff, Stephanie Block, Mel Schneiderman, Paul Shawler Attending via phone: Spencer Evans, Mary Ann McCabe, Mindy Willing
Review of August 2019 minutes
Sonia indicated she spoke briefly at the August 2019 meeting, but it was noted in the minutes. Amy made a motion to approve the minutes with the noted modification. In favor: 11; against: 0; abstentions: 2.
2020 convention program and activities: Tom Gross
Our convention hours were reduced from 15 to 12 this year. With collaborative program, we ended up with 29 hours. We will sponsor six symposia, two of which are co-sponsored by Div. 53 and 1 by Div. 41. The division is co/sponsoring 13 hours of collaborative programming, three hours of invited programs, one hour of poster session (23 posters), a one-hour skill-building session, and two social events.
Past president report – Amy Damashek
Amy reviewed her report included in the agenda book. She noted the recipients of awards to be presented at APA convention – Barbara Fiese for the Hobbs award and William Beardslee for the Distinguished Contributions award. The group discussed whether there was a need to include a budget item for the awards dinner, given that it hasn’t occurred recently. The division won a grant to present a Citizen Psychologist award, with each awardee asked to host a webinar for the division. This year Maureen Kenny will receive the award and has agreed to present a webinar about childhood sexual abuse prevention.
Amy discussed the challenges in scheduling, logistics and cost for the webinar. The group discussed options for hosting the webinar and offered ideas for doing so with low cost.
President report and strategic planning discussion: Earl Turner
Earl reviewed his report included in the Agenda Book, describing the Task Force on Social and Emotional Development of Black Boys Through Research, Advocacy, and Community Engagement. He also described his interest in having board members create content for social media. The board discussed the challenges of following through with content creation initiatives and ways to incentivize participation.
Earl led the group through an initial review of the strategic planning process, APA’s strategic planning priorities and mission statement, and SWOT survey results. Additional discussion was scheduled to continue on Saturday.
Membership report – Mindy Willing
Mindy reviewed the membership report included in the meeting agenda book. The division membership is down 7 percent compared to last year, which is a higher loss rate than APA as a whole. Paula noted that we have collected more this year than we had anticipated, suggesting that membership renewals are going well. Mindy contacts new members to welcome them and offer to speak by phone about membership in the division. Our efforts at handing out brochures at various events does not seem to make a difference in membership numbers. The group discussed mechanisms for reaching larger numbers of people to promote membership. The group discussed our listservs, the membership of which is completely independent of our membership base. Mindy noted that her reminder email to the main listserv about membership renewal/joining resulted in 12 new members. Discussion about listserv activity and the potential to consolidate or eliminate some listservs ensued. The group agreed that communications to the membership should be sent to the secretary who will distribute it using the division email address. Mindy asked that board members email her with additional APA divisions that we are connected with so that she can contact them about sharing Div.37 information with their listservs. She will draft some language that we can circulate to other societies and organizations outside of the APA divisions, noting that you don’t have to be a member of APA to become a member of Div. 37. Stephanie recommended we also send individual emails to our own personal networks of people we think should join the division.
Task force and diversity report – Mirian Ofonedu
Mirian will draft an email to be distributed to members that will invite participation in a conference call to review the DREAM SIG survey results. She reviewed the survey results included in the meeting agenda book. Only 24 people responded to the survey. The group discussed these results. Mirian raised the possibility of collaborating with Julia Silva of APA on a town hall meeting, perhaps focused on juvenile justice and violence prevention. Another possibility would be to compile one-page summaries and other resources on relevant topics that could be used for dissemination at the local level. Perhaps a student could help compile these materials, which could be distributed via the listserv and/or posted on our website. These efforts would reinforce our division’s unique explicit focus on policy and practice.
Section on Child Maltreatment – Stephanie Block
Stephanie reported that membership in the section has increased and full boards have been assembled. The section is in the process of updating the Child Maltreatment post-doc guide. It is also scheduled to host a social hour at the Div. 41 American Psychology-Law Society conference in March. She suggested that sponsoring a get-together for Div. 37 members who are attending the same conference could be useful. The section has struggled a bit with member-at-large projects and is rethinking how those might work. In addition to the section’s dissertation and early career awards, they are considering options for another award, perhaps focusing on mid-career or research translation achievements. The section does have a presidential symposium at APA convention and would like to have an hour of programming for the section board meeting. After discussion, the group suggested that the section awards be presented at the division business meeting. The group also discussed the section’s tradition of collecting donations at convention to support a local organization in the convention city.
ECP update – Paul Shawler
Paul asked the group to describe ECP initiatives in the past and brainstorm about possible ideas for ECP activities going forward. Discussion ensued.
Strategic planning: Earl Turner
The group continued Friday’s discussion about mission statements, the costs and benefits or mirroring APA’s strategic plan and objectives, and potential division-specific goals and objectives. Then, small groups discussed possible strategic objectives for the next two to five and 5-10 years. After group discussion and reports back to the larger group, Earl led the group through a set of slides of potential objectives. Earl will take the information from the discussion to continue the strategic planning process.
Paula Fite – treasurer report
Paul reviewed the report included in the agenda book. The group reviewed an updated budget sent via email on Saturday. The group discussed the allocation for awardees at APA convention. In the past, the division gave awardees an allowance for travel to convention and took them out to dinner. That dinner did not happen recently but the group decided to leave funding in the budget for that category.
A motion to approve the budget was made and seconded. All members present in person and on the phone voted to approve the budget.
Advances – Earl Turner for Lisa
Advances is intended to have between three and five issues per year but none were produced in 2019. The group discussed the challenges to the publication that Lisa identified, including no overlap in the transition from the previous editor to Lisa, as well as difficulty in identifying potential topics and authors. Mary Ann noted that Lisa emails the editorial board several times per year to identify topics and authors for the monograph series. Several topics/manuscripts are currently underway. The group discussed a dissemination plan for soliciting proposals as well as completed issues, including email distribution to members, posting on listservs, and social media. Liz noted some time delays in the publication process of her Advances manuscript, particularly between the final edits to the manuscript and receipt of publication proofs.
- Earl will follow up with Lisa and talk with Springer.
- We need to get copies of the contracts and keep them in our google drive.
Communications report – Sonia Rubens
Sonia reported that 628 people are subscribed to our main listserv. We will be getting a new homepage soon that will include linked information to division leadership and other topics. The group congratulated Sonia for the increased division visibility through the web and other communications outlets.
President-Elect report – Liz Gershoff
Liz discussed potential topics and initiatives for her presidency, including a focus on strategies to prevention violence against children and efforts to increase advocacy skills among our members. Her ideas include organizing webinars, connecting members to resources, educating members about the range of advocacy opportunities in local communities and encouraging community-based research and engagement. She suggested we consider having a session on policy and advocacy become a regular feature of our APA convention programming. She also raised the idea of discussing a graduate student representative on the EC and the possibility of moving our midwinter meeting to a virtual format. Initial discussion of these ideas ensured.
Advocacy coordinator report – Mel Schneiderman
Mel reviewed the preliminary thoughts for his initiatives described in his report. These topics include education in foster care and juvenile justice, psychological maltreatment, corporal punishment and residential care in group homes. The group initially discussed this topics, suggesting any one of them could be a good focus and that they might be appropriate topics for CODOPAR funding.
Fellows committee report – Rick Short
Rick was unavailable for the meeting, so no report was discussed.
The meeting adjourned at 2:45 on Saturday.