Belated new year’s greetings to all of you.
This year opened with a flurry of activity as we sought to review possible presentations for convention in August and welcome new members to the Executive Committee, while turning attention to nominations for the division’s awards and preparations for this year’s elections.
During 2017, the working group on spanking that was jointly supported by Divs. 7 and 37 completed its report and formally requested that the report should be officially endorsed by APA. This is a slow process, but the report is scheduled for discussion by APA council this spring, and their endorsement will be critical. There remains some concern that some divisions will not be supportive of a declaration that spanking is harmful to children and should be avoided. I urge you to read the careful review of the evidence within the report and to make your opinions known.
After years of declining membership, the latter part of 2017 saw a pleasing uptick in the number of members that was sufficiently large to earn the division an extra seat on APA’s Council of Representatives. Excitement about this enhanced voice in APA was quickly doused, however, when we learned that the prior declines had removed one of our existing seats, resulting in the enforced recall of Sarah Friedman, who has represented the division so effectively for two years. The division will thus be represented only by Simona Ghetti in 2018 but will hold an election this spring to elect a second representative who will begin a new term in January 2019. Both Simona and Sarah were extremely active on council during 2017, as they pushed with only partial success to increase transparency within the organization as a whole.
This year’s convention will be held in San Francisco from Aug. 9-11. A preliminary look at the program is available in this newsletter, with fuller details published in the summer issue. For now, can I encourage you to mark your diaries (yes, I know, I’m perhaps the only member who still marks a paper diary) and make plans to attend an exciting convention in a lovely host city. The Div. 7 program will feature award talks by Stephen J. Ceci (G. Stanley Hall Award), Ross A. Thompson (Bronfenbrenner Award) and David S. Yeager (Boyd McCandless Award) along with my presidential address and exciting symposia on childhood trauma, moral development, children’s scientific thinking, narratives about school and the value of international research, as well as lectures by new investigators introducing exciting research directions in developmental psychology and two poster sessions. Unfortunately, Margaret Beale-Spencer, co-recipient of this year’s Bronfenbrenner Award, will not be able to give a lecture at convention. Matt Stevenson has done a fantastic job organizing the program, and I look forward to seeing as many as possible of you in San Francisco this August.
As always, January is a transition time for divisional office holders. In addition to Sarah Friedman, whose term as our representative on council was cut short, Kristina Schmid Callinang and Matt Stevenson completed their terms as Program Committee chair and co-chair, respectively, after managing the 2017 convention in Washington, D.C. Jeni Pathman completed her term as early career representative, and Ross Thompson completed his term as chair of the Fellows Committee. Our sincere thanks to all of them for their service to the division. We also bid welcome to several incoming members of the Executive Committee, including Martha Ann Bell as member-at-large, Cynthia Garcia Coll as chair of the Fellows Committee, Kelly Lynn Mulvey as early career representative, Matt Stevenson as Program Committee chair and Kate Ellis-Davies as Program Committee co-chair.
Our division depends on members who volunteer their time to keep things running smoothly, and we are always eager to hear from members who would like to become more involved. As past President Jacque Eccles has responsibility for organising the elections every spring, so please do contact her right away if you are interested in becoming more involved.
Have a great year. I look forward to hearing from you and to seeing you all in San Francisco.