Greetings everyone! We hope that your fall semester is off to an enjoyable and productive start. As the new school year is beginning, we would like to invite all student members of the SoAP to increase their involvement. In this issue of TAN, we will be discussing several ways that you can become more active in the SoAP, as well as sharing with you our current work.

Reasons to Get More Involved in the SoAP:

• Excellent opportunities for networking as you work side by side with leaders in the fi eld.
• It looks great to have professional service on your CV.
• The chance to infl uence exciting activities the SoAP is implementing in the fi eld.
• Unique opportunity to represent the voice of students interested in addiction psychology.
• Stay up-to-date on important advances in the fi eld the SoAP is involved with. Ways That Students
  
  

Ways That Students and Trainees Can Be Involved with SoAP Committees.

Several of the SoAP’s committees encourage students to get involved by attending teleconference meetings and contributing to their ongoing initiatives. For example, we are currently serving as volunteers for the Taskforce on Empirically-Supported Treatments. In this project we’ve had the opportunity to participate in a rigorous review process where we analyze relevant treatment literature and discuss our conclusions with experienced researchers, who provide helpful feedback and adjustment where needed. Learning to balance this professional service activity with the ongoing demands of graduate school has at times been challenging, but rewarding as well, as we’ve been able to practice the type of service commitment that many researchers and clinicians carry

Student-focused Initiatives.

At various times activities have been specifi cally designed to meet the needs of the SoAP’s student members. These initiatives might seek to connect students with each other or with senior members in the SoAP, such as last year’s Speed Mentoring program. This project connected student members with experienced researchers for a brief mentoring session to seek their professional guidance. We could consider another round of Speed Mentoring or a similar program. One idea would be to connect students with early career psychologists for advice on navigating transitions through the internship and post-doctoral years. These ideas and others are open for discussion and a great way for us to use the SoAP’s resources for our benefit.

Current Ways to Get More Involved!

The Membership Committee is looking for student members to help out with their activities. If you are interested in getting involved, please contact the committee chair, Joel Grube at grube@prev.org. Being a student member on a committee provides the unique opportunity to directly infl uence the focus and work of the committee while collaborating closely with researchers and clinicians in the fi eld.

As your current student representatives, we are very interested in hearing about what you would like to see from the SoAP, and the ways in which you would like to see the SoAP utilized to meet student needs. Would you like to see increased opportunities for networking at conferences? Would you take advantage of the opportunity to apply for small grants to fund your research? Or would you prefer having more discussion through a Listserv with other students in the fi eld? Additionally, we would love to hear any ideas that you might have for getting more involved.

Please contact us: Ashley Hampton at ashleyhampton@temple.edu or Matt Worley at mworley@ucsd.edu.