Division 3 Executive Meeting Minutes

Minutes from Meeting at the Psychonomic Annual Meeting

Angelo Santi, Secretary-Treasurer, APA Division 3

Friday November 16, 2007

7:00 a.m. Hyatt Regency Long Beach

Long Beach, California

Present: Edward Wasserman (President), Howard Egeth (Past President), Nelson Cowan (President Elect), Gil Einstein, Nora Newcombe, Tom Zentall, Jeremy Wolfe, Mark Faust, Kristi Multhaup, Veronica Dark, Angelo Santi.

1. Ed Wasserman provided an update of membership of the Executive Committee as well as the Chairs of committees.

2. Program Chair’s Report

Jeremy Wolfe, this year’s Program Chair, provided an update on plans for the APA Convention in Boston, August 2008. Suggestions for programming were discussed. Veronica Dark noted that the Symposium and Poster Session on Memory Dynamics and the Optimization of Instruction held at APA in August 2007 was particularly successful. APA Division Services stored the poster boards that were purchased by the division and used for this session. Jeremy Wolfe will contact APA Division Services and arrange for them to be transported to Boston.

Nora Newcombe noted that Division 7 invites new Fellows and award winners in that division to give talks at the APA convention. Following some discussion, it was decided that speakers for this year’s Division 3 sessions will be solicited from the New Investigator Award winners from last year as well as the 9 new Fellows elected in Division 3 last year. Speakers will be offered $100 reimbursement for expenses.

This year’s Division 3 Poster Session will provide two graduate student prizes. The winner of the best graduate student poster will receive a plaque and a cheque for $100. The second-place award will be a plaque.

3. Newsletter Editor’s Report

The continuing difficulty of getting APA to assist in keeping up with changing e-mail addresses was noted. Mark Faust noted that the Division 3 Listserv was working and that some messages had been posted. Although some of those present at the meeting said that they had received these postings, others had not. Mark will look into why this may have occurred.

4. APA Council Report

Tom Zentall reported that an APA task force was assembled and met in September to recommend ways of making the annual meeting more attractive for science oriented psychologists to attend and present their research. The Task Force recommended that APA allocate 20 million dollars to enhance science at the APA convention. However, some of the divisions seeking to benefit from these funds do not seem to have much of a focus on science.

Tom also noted the advantages of reintroducing the Science Weekend concept; providing a program listing of science talks that would be sent out well before the convention; and, locating all of the relevant science talks in the same building at the convention.

5. Other Business

Ed Wasserman noted that NIH has requested APA's help in providing names of potential peer reviewers. Patricia Clem Kobor, the Senior Science Policy Analyst in the Science Government Relations Office of APA is requesting a few VETTED names from Division 3 by Tuesday December 4, 2007. The NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research has also released a Request for Information about basic behavioral and social sciences research. This information will be used to create a strategic plan for NIH support of basic behavioral and social sciences research. Some questions to guide responses are included in the NIH announcement, e.g. "What are the existing essential/foundational research topics already being supported and in need of continued support or further development (i.e. core areas of bBSSR)? What existing areas need to be phased out or dropped?" Division 3 was invited to provide responses to APA by November 19, 2007. APA needs to respond to NIH by November 26, 2007. Individuals were urged to respond due to the short lead time of this announcement.

6. The meeting was adjourned at 7:50 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Angelo Santi

Secretary-Treasurer

Department of Psychology

Wilfrid Laurier University

Waterloo, Ont. Canada N2L 3C5

(519) 884-0710, ext. 3087 Fax: (519) 746-7605

asanti@wlu.ca