Division Report

Division 3 Executive Meeting Minutes

Veronica Dark

Minutes of the Division 3 Business Meeting at the Psychonomic Society Annual Meeting

Friday November 15, 2008

6:45 a.m. Pavilion Restaurant, Chicago Hilton Hotel

Chicago, Illinois

Present: Nelson Cowan (President), Edward Wasserman (Past President), Ralph Miller (President-elect), Nora Newcombe (At-large), David Washburn (At-large), Mark Faust (Web Master; Newsletter Ed.), Kristi Multhaup (Newsletter Ed.), Veronica Dark (Secretary-Treasurer), Emily Elliot (Program Chair), Michael Young (Fellows Chair), Michael Beran (Awards Chair)

1. President's announcements

A reminder that at the APA meeting, Division 3 dues were raised to $15.

2. Program Chairs' Reports

2008 Convention: Jeremy Wolfe's written report entitled Success and Embarrassment was distributed.  A synopsis is that the program consisted of first-rate science presented by first-rate speakers (the Success) but the sessions were very poorly attended (the Embarrassment).  The report further stated that Division 3 Members do not consider the APA Convention to be a significant scientific meeting and that the model requiring it to be such is a broken model.  The report suggested that the Division needed a new model that would allow the APA convention to further the Division (and APA) goals of advocating for psychological science, maintaining important journals, and fostering a degree of unity in a diverse field.

2009 Convention:  Emily Elliot reported that Division 3 was participating in APA President Bray's "science" convention within a convention.  She has begun contacting speakers and that she hoped to have a math modeling theme/session with the help/participation of Rich Shiffrin. 

Ed Wasserman pointed out that attendance likely will still be a problem and suggested more of an emphasis on cross-division programming.  Nelson Cowan initiated a discussion of offering continuing education credits at the convention within a convention.  Could the credits be offered for free?  Could the division make money by offering continuing education credits?  Could, for example, there be sessions on meta analysis or Bayesian models that practitioners might find useful?  Nora Newcombe pointed out that Educational and School Psychologists need to know how to interpret findings in the literature and would be interested in good, understandable presentations on statistical methods.  Could the Science Directorate coordinate this for all the science divisions? 

3.  Newsletter Editors' Report

As has been noted for many years, the division still has difficulty getting APA to assist in keeping up with changing e-mail addresses.  

4.  Fellow's Chair Report

Michael Young reported that 8 people had been nominated by the Exec Committee for Fellow status and have been contacted about completing the application.  Seven so far have indicated that they will apply.  The nomination materials are due to the Fellows Committee on December 15, 2008, and to the APA Fellows Committee by February 9, 2009.

5. Discussion Items

Division 6 memo to its Members:  A Division 6 memo to its Members encouraging them to assign their apportionment votes to Division 3 was distributed.  Council seats are allocated on the basis of a December apportionment ballot.  All divisions get one Council seat and additional Council seats are assigned on the basis of the apportionment ballot.  Division 3 had two Council seats, but as a result of the 2007 ballot, lost one seat.  Because the goals of Division 3 and Division 6 have much in common, and because Division 6 is smaller than Division 6 and thus unlikely to gain a second Council seat, the Division 6 Executive Committee sent the memo to its Members.  The Division 3 Executive Committee asked Nelson Cowan to convey the Division's heartfelt thanks to Division 6.  There was some discussion of whether a member of the Division 6 Executive Committee should formally be on the Division 3 Executive Committee.  Because that appears to happen naturally, no action was taken to formalize such a plan.

Declining and aging membership: There was discussion on how to encourage membership in the Division, particularly among younger faculty.  One suggestion was to point out that being a fellow in Division 3 could be used for Promotion & Tenure purposes.  Another suggestion was to have Division 3 flyers available at all relevant conferences.  It was suggested that when Randy Engle was the Division President, there was a spike in membership, so he should be contacted about what he did.  The suggestion was made that the Division have a Facebook page to attract Student Members.  Mark Faust will work with Daniel Brooks, the Division 3 Student Representative about this possibility.

Fellow nomination process.  There was concern that the Fellow nomination process, which involved primarily the Executive Committee, means that Members in the specialty areas underrepresented on the Committee may not receive sufficient support.  In the past a list of Members has been distributed to all Fellows with a request for nominations.  There was support for that process to be reinstated.

 The meeting was adjourned at 7:55 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Veronica J. Dark

Secretary-Treasurer

Department of Psychology

Iowa State University

Ames, IA USA 50011-3180

(515) 294-1688 FAX: (515) 294-6424

vjdark@iastate.edu