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Diversity Chair and Membership Chair Announcements in TAN

News Date: Wednesday, November 13, 2019 - 17:45

Membership Chair-Dr. Susan Collins, Professor, Washington State University  https://addictionpsychology.org/soap-box/2019/fall/membership-chair

Hello again! In addition to serving as your 2020 APA Convention Program Chair, I am honored to have been appointed your Division 50 Membership Committee Chair for 2019-2021. A big thanks to Dr. David Eddie for his hard work and successful tenure as the outgoing Membership Committee Chair. I will do my best to follow in his footsteps. Fortunately, the Membership Committee is astute, enthusiastic and seasoned in doing this work, and I look forward to learning from them over the next couple of years. I will, however, also need all members’ feedback, ideas and involvement, and I would love for you to be in touch via email (susan.collins@wsu.edu) or phone (206-832-7885) if you have ideas and thoughts to share.

In the meantime, I have started working with the Membership Committee on monthly zoom meetings to figure out how to continue to get the word out about Division 50 and expand membership across student, postdoc, early career psychologists as well as retain long-time members. We will also work hard this year to get the message out that Division 50 is a strong community and professional home where service has been described as “more fun than work,” “seeing all of my friends,” and “working for me more than me working for it.” We are also planning to revive the popular Division 50 Podcast and continue to build both our social media and conference presences. (Thanks to Julie Cristello for her social media skills!) Finally, our most recent membership report indicates that we can do better in reaching early career psychologists, non-male-identifying psychologists, and Psychologists of Color. To build inclusivity in our division, we are teaming up with my esteemed colleague and Diversity Committee Chair, Dr. Seema Clifasefi, to reach out to and learn from other APA divisions and external programs that have become more representative of our field.

Diversity Committee Chair- Dr. Seema Clifasefi, Associate Professor, University of Washington https://addictionpsychology.org/soap-box/2019/fall/diversity-chair

I am honored to step into a new role for Division 50 this year, as your Diversity Committee Chair. I am currently working to better understand where we are as an organization in relation to diversity, equity and inclusion across multiple arenas, including membership, representation in research, and general Division 50 policies. My goal is to work both within our own division and across APA divisions to build a more inclusive and equitable Division 50 which fosters diversity of thought and perspectives across multiple domains. For example, according to our most recent APA reports provided to our esteemed Division 50 Membership & Program Chair, Dr. Susan Collins, our Division 50 population is approximately 60% male, 0.1% American Indian/Alaska Native, 1.8% Hispanic/Latinx, 2.5% Asian, 1.6% Black/African American, 0.8% Multiracial; and 0.7% under 30. As Dr. Collins noted in her introduction as Membership Committee Chair, we need to do better in terms of engaging ECPs and non-male identifying folks from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. And, focusing on membership is just one facet to increase our representation. We also need to be encouraging a diverse research portfolio that addresses these issues in our programming, as well as continually examining our Division 50 policies and practices to ensure that we are moving forward in an inclusive and equitable way. Luckily, Dr. Collins (Program Chair and Membership Committee Chair) and I have a long history of successfully working together to address some of these issues in our work together over the past 13 years.

I have been deeply appreciative of those of you who have reached out to share your thought and ideas thus far (still getting my bearings-thank you for your patience), particularly members of the CPA Diversity Committee. THANK YOU! I would love to hear from more of our membership about what you see as your top priorities for this committee moving forward (seemac@uw.edu). Also, we are actively recruiting committee members, so please join us in these efforts.

Finally, I have created a 3-5-minute anonymous survey to garner a snapshot of what you all feel should be top priorities for our committee as we set our priorities for this year (https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Y5Q92QJ). I look forward to working with you all to create a Division 50 that we are all proud to be a part of and can serve as a role model for our fellow colleagues.

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