Hello SPSSI student members,

Welcome to our first newsletter under a new name: Social Issues from Student Perspectives! We’ve embraced this new name because it acknowledges the expertise that graduate students hold. It also reflects our community’s commitment to highlighting the diverse perspectives that enrich our scientific dialogue about social issues in research, policy, and practice.

I would like to share a few recent and upcoming Graduate Student Committee activities that speak to the theme of this release of Social Issues from Student Perspectives: international issues, immigration, and migration.

As part of our methodology webinar series, Natasha Bharj and Nader Hakim from the University of Kansas presented an engaging webinar titled “Internationalizing the Introductory Psychology Curriculum: Critical Diversity Interventions in the Classroom.” They spoke about their pedagogical approach to internationalizing the curriculum by normalizing multiple psychological ways of being and de-naturalizing Western approaches to psychological theory. This webinar highlighted the important role that graduate students can play in bringing international perspectives into the classroom. The webinar recording, which is available on SPSSI’s YouTube channel, includes tips, lesson plan ideas, and evaluation strategies for those who wish to incorporate these ideas into their own work.

For the most recent installment in our policy webinar series, we teamed up with the SPSSI NGO Team for a webinar titled “Getting Global: How to Integrate the United Nations into Your Graduate School Experience.” Priyadharshany (Priya) Sandanapitchai of Francois Xavier Bagnoud Center of Rutgers University, Newark and Maya Godbole from CUNY Graduate Center presented the work their team is doing at the UN to leverage psychological research to support international relations, peacekeeping, and sustainable development. The recording of their webinar is also on YouTube; please check it out to learn more about their current initiatives and how students can get involved in this important work.

Finally, I would like to announce our second International Lunch event, which will take place at the SPSSI conference in San Diego this June. The lunch is co-sponsored by SPSSI’s Internationalization Committee, which is co-chaired by Phia Salter and Michelle Kaufman. We encourage everyone to attend this event for informal networking and opportunities to connect with SPSSI’s international members. Event details will be available in the program for the conference in June.

I look forward to seeing many of you in San Diego! I also welcome the opportunity to connect with SPSSI student members outside of the annual conference. In fact, it was an email from a SPSSI student member that sparked the idea for our webinar with the UN team. Please be in touch if you have ideas, requests for programming, or are interested in getting more involved. I would love to hear from you!

Best,

Angela Robinson

GSC Chair, 2018-2019
 

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