Professional and Academic Support

The Grad Stepping Program is an initiative of the American Psychological Association’s Division 46 (Society for Media Psychology and Technology) Student Committee to increase the recruitment, retention, and graduation of students who are underrepresented in the field of psychology. The program is open to any undergraduate students (2-year or 4-year colleges and universities) or anyone over 18 not currently enrolled in college but interested in pursuing psychology in college in the future, and who identifies with one or more underrepresented groups.

Underrepresented is defined broadly here to include racially/ethnically minoritized individuals, LGBTQ individuals, individuals with disabilities, immigrants, international students, first-generation and/or low-income students, individuals who have experience with homelessness, individuals with former justice involvement, and former foster youth. Applicants can also self-identify with unlisted groups that are underrepresented in psychology.

Inaugural Cohort

Learn more and apply

Objective: The mentoring program aims to foster relationships between students and psychologists at all levels to enhance career development. Specifically, the goal is to connect students (either undergraduate or graduate) within Div. 46 with more experienced students or early to late career psychologist in a range of mentoring relationships that span professional and academic interests. 

Mentors and mentees work collaboratively to set both short- and long-term goals for the development of the mentee’s knowledge and skills.

Become a Mentor

If you are interested in becoming a mentor, please use this link to complete a short mentor survey to begin the process. Graduate students can serve as mentors for undergraduate students, and professionals can serve as mentors for graduate students.

Become a Mentee

If you are interested in becoming a mentee, please use this link to complete a short mentee survey to begin the process. Undergraduate students will be matched with graduate student mentors and graduate students will be matched with a professional in the field.

If you have any questions or concerns, please email Stephanie Joseph.

Objective: Groups will consist of student members who are working on research projects/papers, or writing their dissertation, thesis, or other academic assignments. Meetings will take place over Zoom, on a schedule agreed upon by group members.

Each group will create a shared vision for what they want “accountability” to look like within their group and create a formal agreement for this.

Members of each group can provide a pre-peer review of their peer’s work as requested prior to abstract and manuscript submissions.

If you are interested in joining the accountability groups, please complete the form.

For any questions regarding the program, please email Stephanie Miodus.

For student members of Div. 46, please join our student listerv, which serves as an open forum for discussions to foster community among student members, as well as a space to provide relevant resources and information related to initiatives for students in the division.

To join the listserv, send an email with no subject line and “SUBSCRIBE DIV46STUDENTS FirstName LastName” in the body of the email to listserv@lists.apa.org.