Attendees: Christina Rodriguez, Jennifer Woolward, Liz Gershoff, Stephanie Block, Spencer Evans, Doris Pu, Thomas Vance (Vance), Jenelle Shanley, Mary Ann McCabe, Karen Carmody, Mel Schneiderman, Evan McCracken, Elisa Vele, Kelli Franco, Charissa Pizarro, Kimberly Burkhart, Jen Woolard, Taylor Petty, Casie Morgan, Samantha Klaver, Emily Denne
The meeting opened with a welcome from Christina Rodriguez. Attendees introduced themselves.
Liz Gershoff (past-president):
Initiatives: Liz described the CODAPAR project that she and Mel worked on with eight other APA divisions.
Officer nominations: Liz presented the officer slate from the Nominations Committee. The elected officers unanimously approved the slate.
Award nominations and selection: This year’s winners of division awards include: Stacy LeBlanc (currently president of APSAC) for Distinguished Contribution and Deborah Phillips for the Hobbs award.
Action item: Christina, Liz, Spencer, Mary Ann to review the awards and consider whether need to add one to recognize Distinguished Scholar in some way, not necessarily soliciting nominations; to then be voted on by the board.
Officer’s manual: Liz reorganized officer duties on a timeline, including things that happen before you take office. Discussion of proposed changes ensued.
Action item: Liz will continue to edit; please send suggestions to Liz. She will make list of all of the changes and questions.
Action item: Christina will look through student officers’ manual to see what should shift into the main one, and eliminate a separate officer’s manual. Only one manual is needed.
Jenelle Shanley (treasurer)
Jenelle reported on our unusual financial situation of having extra funds, likely due to the pandemic eliminating in-person events. APA also has made some requests related to restructuring. Discussion ensued about the purpose of our rainy-day fund, which would relate to recommendations regarding risk status of investments. Karen Carmody reported on the section’s financial status. The section is doing well financially.
Motion: Move our Ameriprise to a discretionary account.
Vote: Unanimous support.
Action item: The Finance Committee will find out about operating reserves, start looking at how to use the fund’s growth for division initiatives to bring to the board in August.
Kelli Franco (membership chair)
We have 721 memberships for 2022 to date. We have 335 nonrenewals, many of whom are students whose free membership year lapsed. We returned to an ongoing discussion about whether our new Early Career Professionals (ECPs) see benefits from membership. Attendees brainstormed on this topic as well as the division’s pipeline to fellow status, the requirements of which (e.g., two recommendation letters from current fellows) may be a barrier for diverse applicants.
Motion: Students (including post-docs) will pay $4.37 per year for their entire membership as students. If our payment technology can’t handle decimals, the membership cost will move to $5.
Vote: Unanimously approved.
Motion: Regular membership dues effective 2023 go to $45 and ECP dues go to $37.
Vote: Motion passed by majority vote.
Kim Burkhart (advocate editor)
Kim offered two suggestions for the board’s consideration. The board agreed that the editor could have discretion and encouraged additional columns (e.g., member spotlight). The board noted that an associate editor of advances would need to be selected by the journal’s board with the editor’s input and independent of the division board.
Sunday, February 6
Casie Morgan introduced herself as a student representative.
Mary Ann McCabe (APA Council representative)
National Academies: Liz is stepping in to represent the division for the National Academies. If those meetings go back to being in person, Liz’s travel needs to covered. The National Academies’ focus for the coming year is mental health crisis for children and youth, with the first workshop scheduled for spring.
APA Council: This is Mary Ann’s last year on Council. In 2019, policy and planning put forth the idea to eliminate divisions and states from the bylaws, which would reduce their representative capacity. The P&P Board is holding listening sessions and will bring recommendations forward with a likely vote at convention. Mary Ann discussed proposed changes to APA governance structure. We may need to have further conversations and/or call a special meeting as this further develops.
Mel Schneiderman (member-at-large, advocacy coordinator)
Mel thanked Liz for all the work she has done on leading the field on preventing violence against children. Advocacy efforts are shifting from the federal level to state and local levels.
Action item: Will send out another call for Citizen Psychologist Award.
Charissa Pizarro (member-at-large, task force coordinator and diversity activities)
Charissa attended the Divisions of Social Justice meeting and reported back on their APA theme of immigration. Charissa proposed that we set up a task force on immigration with a particular focus on family separation and the trauma of children crossing the border, perhaps generating guidelines for clinical treatment. Mary Ann noted that treatment guidelines would have to come from APA, rather than division, but that they could propose the idea to the Committee on Professional Standards in Practice, which could in turn support divisions to take the lead in writing them.
Christina proposed an officer manual change that this MAL would be the liaison with the SIG and connect back to the board. Miriam Ofonedu and Sonia Rubens have committed to continuing the SIG, although neither is on the board. MAL representation within the SIG ensures board representation.
Action item: Charissa to approach relevant divisions for support of the task force.
Eliza Vele-Tabbador (social media chair)
Elisa asked Board members to share more content with her—e.g, awareness, advocacy information, opportunities. More frequent posting is what’s helping our numbers jump. We try for 3-4 x/week but would be helpful if could do every other day. More interactive content—videos, things that can be watched would be helpful. She asked whether there is content we are not representing that we should see more of. We are posting at high traffic times and that helps.
Spencer Evans (member-at-large, communications and technology)
APA has updated our website with the new board members’ information. Please email Spencer if anything needs to be changed. If we are having students involved in division activities, there’s a potential risk for students to do work and not get acknowledged, so it would be nice to have them recognized on the website. The Division 37 student listserv has been mostly dormant but has a number of members. Spencer hasn’t had a chance to talk with Keith at APA about merging them yet.
Action item: Spencer, Kelly, and Jen will work to get everyone who is a member onto the listserv. Will be an opt-out, not an opt-in.
Action item: Christina will draft email to folks who are not on the listserv, checking in to see if you want to be on the listserv. Maybe send 2x/year.
Taylor Petty introduced herself as the Section APA conference chair.
Thomas Vance (member-at-large, early career professionals)
Vance presented his goals: Numbers, inclusivity, exposure—as provided in a memo.
- Recruit and engage ECP members—goal is to increase by 20; social at convention.
- Structured POC EP identity sessions w/Diversity Committee: Create culture of inclusivity, etc. for POC ECP—virtual session.
- ECP coffee chat: target career path topics, ECP-centered discussions—virtual.
Action item: Asked for additional $300 for honoraria for speakers at coffee chat. Will be discussed in budget discussion.
Casie Morgan, Samantha Klaver (student representatives)
Students will continue the tradition of a webinar with Divisions 53 and 54 for fall semester. They had a well-attended advocacy training webinar last fall. Her current initiative includes rebuilding connections among students, reviewing the structure of the student committees and involvement as well as reviewing student handbook and officers’ manual handbook. If allowed, they hope to have the mentorship breakfast at Convention.
Doris Pu (APA program chair)
We received 12 hours of allocated programming, the same as last year. However, we do not have any collaborative programs this year but have five symposia under review. We will also have the Walk a Mile initiative and awards sessions. We will add the social hours and breakfast. We also have under review three skill-building sessions, one critical conversation, and 42 posters. Most of reviews are complete. We will determine program acceptances in next several weeks and create that schedule. We will also have our usual executive committee meeting on Thursday and social hour Thursday night.
Budget discussion
Discussion ensued on the proposed budget.
Motion: Approved the budget.
Vote: Unanimous approval of the budget.
Action item: Liz and Christina will review all award calls, language, recommended honoraria, come back to group.
Meeting closed at 3:15 p.m.