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Email - April 2020 Membership Minute

Important Summer Conference Update. Due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, SPSSI’s 2020 in-person conference events in Denver, CO are now canceled. As always, the health and safety of our members and staff is paramount and under current circumstances, we cannot responsibly ask attendees to travel to meetings this June. We continue to explore ways in which our members might share research with one another through online options and we will offer an option to do so only if it is feasible this year. Your opinion is important to us. Please fill out this short survey by April 21 to let us know your thoughts.

Click here for additional conference updates, including information on conference fee refunds.

Announcing the inaugural SPSSI Action Teaching Award Winner: Victoria Burns. Congratulations to Victoria Burns (pictured above) of Florida International University, the winner of the 2020 SPSSI Action Teaching Award, for her entry, "Reducing Sexual Assault on Campus." SPSSI recently established this annual grant program to provide SPSSI members with funds to develop, enhance, or measure the impact of an innovative action teaching classroom activity, student assignment, field experience, or web-based resource. Congratulations are also in order for Eric Jones of Grand Valley State University for his honorable mention entry, "Making Research Methods Come Alive: Using Psychology to Fuel Volunteering," and for Daniel Stalder of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater for his honorable mention entry, "An Online Support Group and Blog to Reduce Bias and Conflict."

Call for proposals on "Legal Socialization: The Next 50 Years." In 1971, the Journal of Social Issues (JSI) published a special issue (Vol. 27, Issue 2) featuring a collection of articles exploring the law as a socializing agent. Building on the burgeoning law and society movement from the first half of the 20th century, that issue of JSI was the first attempt to bring together an eclectic group of scholars to explore a brand new field of inquiry: legal socialization, or the process by which people develop their relationship with the law (Tapp & Levine, 1974). For many contemporary legal socialization researchers, that 1971 issue represents the cornerstone upon which the field developed, ushering in a new era of work exploring the ways people develop their understanding of laws via the acquisition of law-related values, attitudes, and reasoning capacities and how that development affects legal behavior (Cohn & White, 1990; Tapp, 1991; Trinkner & Tyler, 2016). Deadline: April 27, 2020.

Call for papers on "Public Psychology: Cultivating Socially Engaged Science for the 21st Century." American Psychologist invites submissions for a special issue on psychology’s role in social transformation, including research, advocacy, and practice that foregrounds psychologists’ roles as agents of positive social change. Two-page abstract due: May 1, 2020. Invitation to submit a full-length manuscript will be sent: June 1, 2020. Deadline for manuscript submission based on approved abstracts: September 1, 2020.

Social Issues Dissertation Award. SPSSI is now accepting submissions for the Social Issues Dissertation Award. Any doctoral dissertation in psychology (or in a social science with psychological subject matter) accepted between March 1 of the previous year and up to the deadline of the current year is eligible. Applicants must have successfully defended their dissertation prior to the current year's award deadline. Please note that in the award year an individual or group may only submit one paper to one SPSSI award (from among the Allport, Klineberg, and Dissertation Awards) and applicants may not submit to the Dissertation Award twice. Deadline: May 1, 2020.

Grants-in-Aid. SPSSI is now accepting submissions for the Grants-in-Aid (GIA) program. The GIA program supports scientific research in social problem areas related to the basic interests and goals of SPSSI and particularly those that are not likely to receive support from traditional sources. The Committee especially encourages proposals involving (a) unique and timely research opportunities, (b) underrepresented institutions, graduate students, and junior scholars, (c) volunteer research teams, and (d) actual, not pilot, projects. Funding of up to $1000 is available for graduate student research. In the case of graduate students, strong preference is given to applications from students at the dissertation stage of their career. Funding of up to $2000 is available for research by SPSSI members who already have a Ph.D. Applicants can be at any stage of their academic work at any type of institution. Deadline: May 15, 2020.

Clara Mayo Grant. SPSSI is now accepting submissions for the Clara Mayo Grant program. The Clara Mayo Grant program was set up to support master's theses or pre-dissertation research on aspects of sexism, racism, or prejudice, with preference given to students enrolled in a terminal master’s program. Studies of the application of theory or the design of interventions or treatments to address these problems are welcome. Up to six grants will be awarded each cycle. The maximum amount of any grant is $1000. Proposals that include a college or university agreement to match the amount requested will be favored, but proposals without matching funds will also be considered. Deadline: May 15, 2020.

Louis Kidder Early Career Award. SPSSI is now accepting submissions for the Louis Kidder Early Career Award. The Louis Kidder Early Career Award was designed to recognize social issues researchers who have made substantial contributions to their field early in their careers. Nominees should be investigators who have made substantial contributions to social issues research within ten years of receiving a graduate degree and who have demonstrated the potential to continue such contributions. Nominees need not be current SPSSI members. The Winner will receive $500 and a plaque. Deadline: June 1, 2020.

Gordon Allport Prize. SPSSI is now accepting submissions for the Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize. The Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize was designed to honor "the best paper or article of the year on intergroup relations," about which Professor Allport cared deeply. The winner will receive $1000. Deadline: June 15, 2020 for submissions officially published in 2019.

Questions? Please contact awards@spssi.org.

Resources

Claremont Graduate University accepting new applications for its MA and Ph.D. programs in Applied Social Psychology. Despite the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19, Claremont Graduate University is accepting new applications for its MA and Ph.D. programs in Applied Social Psychology throughout the summer.

Op-ed from SPSSI member Marybeth (Beth) Shinn: Unused TANF could reduce homelessness for Tennessee families. In a January 2020 op-ed for the Tennessean, SPSSI member Marybeth (Beth) Shinn of Vanderbilt University argues that Tennessee is sitting on the biggest pot of unspent funds to aid needy families of any state in the United States—$732 million—and that this money could be used to help address the needs of homeless families in the state.

SPSSI member Michele Gelfand featured on NPR's Hidden Brain. In an April episode of Hidden Brain, NPR host Shankar Vedantam interviews Michele Gelfand (University of Maryland) on the topic "Playing Tight And Loose: How Rules Shape Our Lives." The episode begins with a discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic and how culture informed different country-level responses to the outbreak.

From SPSSI member Kim Case: Best Practices for Promoting Academic Honesty in Online Exams. Thank you to Kim Case for sharing this resource, which she created for Virginia Commonwealth University. This document provides ideas and guidelines for faculty in assessing student learning in a remote learning environment, and suggestions for promoting academic integrity.

The University of Kansas shares new Coronavirus Response Tool Box. The Coronavirus disease outbreak threatens our communities, locally and globally. Working together, we can strengthen the public health and community response that will help protect all of us. On this webpage, please find links to useful tools drawn from authoritative sources—the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—and from the Community Tool Box, used by nearly 6 million people worldwide.

Berkeley Conversations: Covid-19. UC Berkeley has launched a new online video series, “Berkeley Conversations: Covid-19”, to connect our leading experts with the public they serve, and each other. Through Q&A’s, seminars, and panel discussions, faculty from a wide range of disciplines—from epidemiology to economics to the computing and data now undergirding their work—will share what they know, and what they are learning.