Graduate and Postdoctoral Representatives’ Report
Grant Edmonds and Michael Boudreaux
The ARP grad student/postdoc committee organized a mentoring lunch at the 2013 ARP meeting in Charlotte, NC. By all measures it was a great success. During the Saturday lunch hour, four tables met to discuss four different topics: Sanjay Srivastava led “Finding an Academic Job in Personality Psychology,” Simine Vazire led “Replicability and Productivity,” Brent Donnellan led “The Peer Review Process,” and David Funder led “Teaching Personality Psychology.” We’d like to thank our four mentors again for generously offering their time and expertise!
Over thirty graduate student and postdoc members participated. There was much enthusiasm, and people signed up quickly. However, most participants were able to sit at their first choice table. Following the conference, we collected feedback using a short online survey. Twenty-four participants responded. There was unanimous support for having events like this at future meetings, and 95% of respondents felt that their most important questions were addressed. The most common suggestion for improving the event involved moving to separate rooms where conversations could be conducted in a quieter setting. For those who participated in the mentoring lunch and completed the survey, we offered a small prize to one lucky respondent chosen at random. Congratulations to Nicole Lawless who won the drawing! She received a $25 Amazon.com gift card.
We hope that events like this will continue to be part of the biennial meeting of ARP. We plan to use all of your feedback to provide the best content and setting for the next ARP conference. Thanks to everyone who participated in this year’s mentoring lunch, and to those who provided valuable feedback.
Finally, special thanks to Elsevier for providing funds to support this year’s mentoring lunch.
We’d love to hear from you. If you have any suggestions or comments for the grad student/postdoc committee, please contact us via e-mail: Grant Edmonds, at gedmonds[at]ori.org, or Michael Boudreaux, at mboud001[at]ucr.edu.