Teaching & Mentoring Committee

The SPSSI Teaching and Mentoring Committee’s purpose is to support and advance excellence in social issues teaching and mentoring. The Teaching and Mentoring Committee was originally established in 2007 as an award committee that recognized outstanding social issues teaching and mentoring at the undergraduate and graduate levels. In 2010, the awards expanded to include a new category for contingent or community college teaching. In 2010 and 2011, committee leadership and members recognized a broader need to address social issues teaching and mentoring within SPSSI. For example, by establishing a presence of teaching-related columns in the SPSSI newsletter, the committee brought teaching and mentoring into the SPSSI community conversation.

Goals of the committee include:

• recognizing outstanding social issues teaching and mentoring (e.g., award committees);
• providing resources on teaching and learning about social issues (e.g., newsletter essays and conference sessions);
• bringing teaching and learning about social issues into the forefront to encourage sharing of ideas, collaborative innovations, and pedagogical discussions among members (e.g., newsletter essays and conference sessions).

Committee and Council Process: The Teaching and Mentoring Committee should bring recommendations about issues and priority areas related to teaching and mentoring to Council for discussion and approval at the Council meeting. Once the Council has approved these recommendations, the Executive Director and other SPSSI staff would have authority to take action on Council recommendations after consultation with the President, providing timely notification to Council of actions taken. It is recommended that a member of Council should chair or co-chair this committee.

The Committee selects awardees for annual teaching and mentoring awards, and for the presentor of SPSSI’s annual address at the National Institute for the Teaching of Psychology (NITOP) conference in January of each year.