Membership Chair

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.