Stephanie Miodus, MA, MEd & Stephanie Joseph, MA, MEd
stephanie.miodus@temple.edu & stephanie.joseph08@gmail.com

Over the past year, the focus of the Student Committee has been to increase opportunities for student interactions within the Division. As co-chairs, we were excited to foster connections among students interested in media psychology and hope to continue building on our current initiatives over the upcoming year. Our goals for the next year are to promote student involvement and collaboration in the following three areas:

1. Highlighting students’ work

As a Student Committee, we hope to highlight students within the Division by spotlighting their work, interests, and accomplishments by launching a monthly Student Spotlight. This space on both the Division website and listserv will provide an opportunity for students to become familiar with other student members and their work. We plan to also create a database of student members’ presentations for the upcoming APA Convention to promote and support each others work. Additionally, to highlight student research and practice, we plan to include student guests on some episodes of our Psych With a Twist of Media & Tech podcast series. Look out for these upcoming episodes and we encourage you to check out previous episodes of the podcast here:

Episode 1: Dissertation Talks with Joanne Broder, PhD

Episode 2: Overcoming Procrastination with Linda Sapadin, PhD

Episode 3: Early Career Convos with Andres De Los Reyes, PhD

Episode 4: Becoming One with Media and Tech with Chanda Reynolds, PsyD

Episode 5: Academia and Beyond with Chris Ferguson, PhD

Episode 6: Peer to Peer Convos with Shannel Blake

2. Promoting collaboration and networking among students

Using our current student accountability writing groups as a platform, we encourage collaboration among members via accountability meetings by providing a space for students to share their works in progress and seek feedback from other student members. Moreover, we plan to host a Paper in a Day (Alisic, 2012) style event, where students are grouped to work on a tangible project within a day (e.g., research manuscript, policy brief) to foster collaboration among students with similar interests who are not yet connected. We also plan to host additional virtual student social hours, using platforms such as Gather (https://gather.town/), over the next year to encourage student members of the Division to get to know one another beyond their work to develop a strong professional network.

3. Supporting diversity among students in the field.

The Student Committee plans on welcoming the first cohort of the Grad Stepping Program this summer. This initiative aims to increase the recruitment, retention, and graduation of undergraduate students interested in media psychology and who are underrepresented in the field of psychology. 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 experienced homelessness, individuals with former justice involvement, and former foster youth. The program will operate as a six-month cohort model with bi-monthly virtual meetings, including live speaker events, professional development activities, and team building/networking for the cohort. Cohort members will also be invited to relevant Division 46 Student Committee programming and will be matched with a graduate student mentor.

We hope you will join us by participating in and supporting these initiatives as we seek to strengthen an inclusive collaborative environment for all student members of the Division.

Reference

Alisic, E. (2012). Paper in a day. Trauma recovery lab. http://www.trauma-recovery.net/paper-in-a-day/.