Dear STP ECP Committee,

I was teaching during much of this year’s virtual Annual Conference on Teaching (ACT) and wasn’t able to participate in as much of the (great-looking!) programming as I was hoping. I’m particularly interested in knowing about things to check out for ECPs! Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated! 

Please inform,

Catching Up

Dear Catching Up,

We’re so glad to hear that you’re still interested in checking out the programming for this year’s virtual Annual Conference on Teaching (ACT)! Like last year, this year’s ACT was exciting and engaging, in spite of—and perhaps sometimes because of—the virtual modality. Because registration costs were so low (e.g., $25 for members), the conference was widely accessible and attendance was massive. (In fact, it was our biggest ACT ever, with well over 400 attendees!) There were dozens of posters, on-demand videos, and synchronous talks, workshops, and keynotes that are now being hosted on the conference website. These materials will remain available until October 1, 2022; register here.

Those who register can browse all the programming on the conference website:

·        recordings of the synchronous presentations, 

·        recordings of the on-demand presentations, which are conveniently divided into 

·        Best Practices presentations, 

·        Professional Development presentations, 

·        Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) presentations, 

·        Equity, Inclusion, & Liberation presentations, and

·        STP presentations (e.g., awards, task forces), and 

·        on-demand posters, divided into 

·        Best Practices and Professional Development posters, 

·        Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) posters, and 

·        Equity, Inclusion, & Liberation posters. 

There are a wealth of amazing resources for teachers of all stages, including ECPs. It’s challenging to narrow them down to a reasonable number to highlight here, but we’ll do our best! 

One excellent piece of programming that will be useful to teachers of all experience levels is the synchronous presentation by Kristina Howanksy, India Johnson, Melanie Maimon, and Eva Pietri, titled, “Inclusify Your Syllabi: A Practical Guide to Incorporating Identity Safety Cues into Your Course Syllabi.” We would also recommend checking out another synchronous presentation, titled, “Half Data, Half Heart: Reflections on the Teaching Life,” by Jordan D. Troisi. While the former is more of a practical, hands-on, data-driven discussion of inclusive syllabi, the latter is marked by reflective musings about teaching (still with important practical implications). 

In terms of on-demand presentations, in this day and age we would highly recommend checking out Carey Bernini Dowling and Rebekah Smith’s “Designing Asynchronous Online Courses for All Class Sizes.” Similarly practical is Julie C. Hill’s “My Students ACTUALLY Read: Techniques Beyond the Reading Quiz for Increasing Reading and Preparation Before Class.” (This is certainly a struggle for many of us, and these recommendations are awesome!) Finally, Marie S. Hammond, Peggy Brady-Amoon, and Ruth L. Greene’s “Best Practices: Engaging Diverse Students in Career Development in Psychology” presentation is a must watch for anyone wanting to be career champions for their students. 

Finally, we would be remiss if we failed to mention our own workshop specifically designed for ECPs, titled, “The Holistic ECP: Centering values, boundaries, and equity as cornerstones of career decisions.” In this workshop, we completed a variety of activities together, including a value sort to help us determine what our values and priorities are, an activity to develop goals that are Specific, Measurable, Ambitious, Realistic, and Timely (i.e., “SMART”), and an activity that required us to think through how we might turn those SMART goals into “SMARTIE” goals (i.e., goals that address or consider Inclusion and Equity). If you missed this workshop, fear not! You can find our worksheet—containing these activities and more—by clicking HERE. 

We hope you find these materials enriching, and that you feel motivated to continue exploring the many excellent resources that were not mentioned in this brief post!

Your STP Early Career Psychologists Committee

Courtney Gosnell, Ph.D.

Karenna Malavanti, Ph.D.

Albee Mendoza, Ph.D.

Molly Metz, Ph.D.

Janet Peters, Ph.D.

Daniel Storage, Ph.D.