Abstract
As part of the updating of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology's (STP) history, STP leaders and past leaders participated in discussions of topics concerning change and evolution of STP during the last 25 years. This panel consisted of STP Past Presidents and focused on the changes they have seen in STP.
Keywords
The edited discussion reproduced below took place on November 11, 2019. The participants (with STP offices held listed in parentheses) were as follows: Sue Frantz (President, 2018; Project Syllabus Director, 2007–2009; OTRP Associate Director for TOPIX, 2010–2011; Vice President for Resources, 2012–2016; Co-Chair, Empowering Teachers Task Force, 2019), Regan Gurung (President, 2011; Chair, APA Program Committee, 2001–2005; Coordinator, Teaching Social and Personality Preconference, 2006–2010; Ad Hoc Working Group to Review High School Standards Document, 2007; Chair, Task Force on STP Awards, 2009; Chair, Elections & Appointments Committee, 2013; Coordinator, SoTL Workshop/Writing Workshop, 2014–2016; Chair, SoTL Consulting Service/Website Working Group, 2014; APA Council Representative, 2018–2019), Jane Halonen (President, 1999–2000; Chair, G. Stanley Hall/Harry Kirke Wolf Addresses, 1992–1994; Co-Chair, APA Preconvention Teaching Workshop, 1994–1996; Chair, APA Program Committee, 1996–1998; Co-Chair, APS Teaching Institute, 2001–2002; Chair, Elections & Appointments Committee, 2003), Mary Kite (President, 2006; Task Force on Diversity, 1992–1994; Chair, Teaching Awards Committee, 1997–2000; Chair, Task Force on e-Publishing, 2004; Policies & Procedures Manual Task Force, 2007; Chair, Elections & Appointments Committee, 2008; Co-Chair, e-Workshop: Teaching Introductory Psychology in the 21st Century, 2008; Chair, Unification Task Force, 2008; Chair, Task Force on Integration of New Bylaws into Procedures Manual, 2010; APA Council Representative, 2012–2017; Chair, Fellows Committee, 2014), Elizabeth Swenson (President, 1992–1993; Chair, Membership Committee, 1984–1986; Secretary/Treasurer, 1987–1990; Chair, Ethics in Teaching & Academic Life Committee, 1990–1991, 1999–2000; Chair, Elections & Appointments Committee, 1995–1996; Liaison to Committee on International Relations, 1996–2000; APA Council Representative, 1988–1990, 1993–1996, 2000–2002; Legal Counsel, 1999–current; Coordinator, STP Program at APS Convention, 2000–2002; Executive Secretary, Fund for Excellence, 2007–2014), Wayne Weiten (President, 1996–1997; Chair, Committee on Secondary & Undergraduate Education, 1989–1990; Chair, Task Force on Cooperation with APS, 1989–1990; Co-Chair, Membership Committee, 1990–1994; Chair, Publications Committee, 1997–2002; Chair, Fund for Excellence, 2003–2008), and Randy Smith, Moderator (Chair, Membership Committee, 1988–1990; Chair, APA Program Committee, 1990–1993; Chair, Fellows Committee, 1993–1995; Chair, G. Stanley Hall/Harry Kirke Wolf Addresses, 1994–1995; Editor, Teaching of Psychology, 1996–2008; Co-Chair, APS Liaison/STP/APS Relations, 1999–2002; Fund for Excellence, 2009–2016; Chair, Advancing Pedagogical Science: SoTL Resources Task Force, 2011).
I appreciate all of you Past Presidents taking time to contribute to the STP history project. The question I would like to tackle first is, and I’ve asked you in advance not to be modest, what are you proudest of accomplishing during your presidential term and afterward? I know you don’t always accomplish everything that you wanted in that year but something that you got rolling. I think for this first question, we’ll go in chronological order. So, Elizabeth, the floor is yours.
Okay. We had a pretty modest beginning when I was president. We had one 4-hour Executive Committee (EC) meeting at the convention, and that was all. I think what I’m proudest of is getting us started on the road to do some strategic planning. What I’m most disappointed about is that, in the 4-hour meeting, we had only about 20 minutes left over to start, but at least it was a start.
Right. Wayne, you’re next.
I’m probably going to be a weird outlier here, which I guess there’s probably nothing unusual about that. If I were to think about the things that were my biggest contributions to STP, to be honest, they probably didn’t come during my presidential year. So, if you allow me to venture beyond that, I would say you (Randy) of course recall I followed you as Membership Chair, and I thought one of the important things we did at that time was to open up the membership beyond APA members.
Right—that was important.
That sounds so obvious today, and I cannot imagine our organization today without the rich diversity we have, with all these high school instructors and community college instructors and so forth, but that was not the way it worked back in the early 1990s. I, of course, didn’t do that by myself, but it was during my tenure as Membership Chair that you and I and others campaigned to open up the membership. I think that was an enormously important move. First of all, it strengthened us financially. Any organization is hugely dependent on its membership numbers. I just cannot imagine how different STP would be without all the contributions made by all those people who wouldn’t have otherwise been members. Prior to that time, you had to be an APA member or a high school affiliate to join Division 2. That really limited our growth and limited the nature of the people who were involved in the organization. So, that all happened prior to my presidential year.
My presidential year, I think the thing I’m proudest of is appointing VinnyHevern to take care of, to be the internet maven for the Office of Teaching Resources in Psychology (OTRP). Speaking of OTRP, I had nothing to do with its development, but if you want to harken back to the era, I think that was a huge, huge development in terms of mounting our resources and making them available to people. Marky Lloyd, I think, gets most of the credit for that. I don’t recall who suggested that I reach out to VinnyHevern; I did not know Vinny before I reached out to him on the suggestion of someone, and I’m really curious as to who that was. But he did a great job as OTRP Editor at first, and then 2 or 3 years later, we made him supervisor of all the various internet sites we had, and he really grew our internet presence tremendously and got our resources out to the world. So, if I want to focus on something during my presidential year, that would be it.
Then subsequent to my presidential year, of course, would be the renegotiation of the contract for ToP. It’s hard to convey just how poor we were prior to that renegotiation. I mean, we always talk about passing the hat; we had to pay for any kind of food at the EC meetings.
I just remember passing the hat, and even then, we weren’t really breaking even.
No. Prior to 1996—that was our last year with the original Erlbaum contract—we were losing about US$12,000 to US$13,000 annually on the journal, which only left us about US$15,000 to work with to run the entire organization. After we renegotiated the contract, and this seems like peanuts now, but it was a huge difference at the time—after we renegotiated that, we started making about US$30,000 a year. That was a turnaround of over US$40,000 annually, and that was in 1998 when we finally had some money to work with. So, I would cite those as the things that I am most proud of.
Wayne, do you think Barney Beins might have been the one who introduced you to Vinny?
Geographically, that would make some sense, but I don’t recall for sure.
Geographically and computer-wise.
Okay, yeah, you’re right about that too.
Jane, your turn.
I had the dubious pleasure/honor of being President the last year there was no such thing as an Executive Director. I timed my presidential year badly because it was also the year I started my brand new job at James Madison University. So, I barely remember anything about my presidential year. I do remember the theme that I picked because I was starting to feel like we were becoming an organization with a much larger footprint. I picked “crossing boundaries,” but I can’t remember what boundaries I was eager to get us to cross. I just knew that we were poised on the verge of being an exploding organization with lots of tentacles in different directions.
If I had to say what I’m proudest of, at least what I remember is, I made a special award category the day we had our business meeting to honor Wayne for his brilliant renegotiation of the contract that put us in such a good position. Now, I think we call such things “Presidential Citations,” but back then, I just wanted to do something special for Wayne because I saw him as having saved the organization. So, I’m pretty proud of that.
Any regrets?
That I can’t remember what boundaries I was crossing, but I must have crossed a lot of them. That’s all I can say.
So many you forgot them all.
Yes. It’s embarrassing to remember so little. I did a little investigation in my personal archive, and I found a picture of all of us who are on the call (I think except for maybe Sue) who are seated around the Executive Committee table in 1999, looking a lot younger, including Regan, who I think was brand new at the time. I think Neil Lutsky had just introduced Regan to the group. I was thinking, “Who’s this young guy? What’s he doing at the table?” But wow! That was brilliant of Neil to find that talent and introduce Regan early on. But, I haven’t a clue what we talked about.
Mary, you’re next.
It’s another thing that seems obvious now but, before I was President, we didn’t have a Diversity Committee. So, that was one thing that I introduced. Then, that same year the Best Practices Conference focused on diversity and that led to the edited book by Regan and Loreto Prieto. We had focused on diversity before; in fact, I got started on diversity by being a taskforce chair when Elizabeth was president. Our group developed the first set of diversity resources for STP. The first Diversity Committee, chaired by Linh Littleford, did a really good job and was very forward thinking. Since that time, the Diversity Committee has been quite active and their work has kept us up to date on diversity issues.
The other thing I’m really proud of was the online webinars that we did, even though they were later sunsetted by somebody present here. But I think that we had a really nice opportunity to reach a lot of people, and some of our best minds and speakers were part of that series. We reached hundreds of faculty with that initiative, and many wonderful speakers, including Jane, I believe, came to Ball State University in person to present.
I was one of the first speakers.
You were. And Diane Halpern came, Charles Brewer came one year, so we had a wonderful opportunity to reach people without charging conference fees. Those are the two things that come to mind.
One of my regrets is that we didn’t finish the policies and procedures manual during my presidency. But later, I chaired the task force that was able to do that, and I think that was also a really important contribution to the organization. So now, I know that document keeps going. We finally wrote down what we do and why we do it; that was a big task for this initiative. I can’t remember who was president when we did that, but it was something that needed to be done and took a long time for us to get around to.
Sometimes we have great ideas, and they take a while to finish.
Regan, how about you?
I think, speaking of ideas that take a while, I’ve been reflecting on things and it’s neat to see how many connections there are on here. I mean, Randy was on my SOTL Task Force; Sue was on my Connecting Teachers Task Force. I think looking over all the stuff that went on, I’m probably most proud about the Scholarship of Teaching Learning activity. During my year, with the help of Pam Ansburg, we got new SOTL grant launched, and we also started the SOTL workshops, which just celebrated their ninth year at the STP Conference a couple of weeks ago. So, it’s really neat to see all that because I’m probably most proud about the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning activity grant-wise, writing workshop-wise. Just activity-wise, this seems like we managed to get a lot of stuff going that is still going on today.
I’m also really thrilled with what Aaron Richmond and working groups did with the Model Teaching Competency Task Force. Noreen had that taskforce continue for the year during her presidency too, and it’s really neat to see what Aaron, and Guy Boysen, and others came up with in terms of model teaching. So, really nice to see those evidence-based strategies that Aaron managed to put together when he chaired the taskforce.
Any frustrations?
Oh boy! I think connecting teachers. I think many of us, all of us probably have really bemoaned the fact that STP does such good work, but our membership number is not as high as it should be. I mean, I know a lot of people take advantage of STP’s services, which is great, and we give it away for free, but I know I really wanted to try and do some connecting. I tried really hard to reach out and make connections with different groups to try and get more teachers into the fold. But that’s something that just was really tough to get traction. I mean in fact, I was looking over my notes, Sue cochaired a subcomponent of what I call the Empowering Teachers Task Force with Maureen McCarthy. They came up with a great list of things that we could do, but I think I only managed to get some of those things done. I think that’s one of the things I’m most frustrated by—even with directed efforts to get more teachers into STP, it has just been really hard going.
Wayne and I as membership chairs can attest to that fact. We are really underrepresented given all the psychology teachers out there.
Yes. Actually, if you had asked me about my biggest frustration, that’s what I would have cited, the failure to get us up over about 3,000 people. I am endlessly baffled by why our membership is not 5,000 or 6,000 or 8,000. It just breaks my heart—I just don’t understand. But as much as we try, we seem to have plateaued a little over the 3,000 mark—which is way healthier than the 1,800 we were at in the early ‘90s, but it’s not where I think we ought to be, and I don’t have any solutions. But it is definitely the biggest frustration.
Now it’s Sue’s turn.
I get to thank all of you since this is what I have, a little over a month left in my past presidential year. So, I want to publicly thank Wayne for his general contract goodness. STP currently has about a million and a half dollars in assets; about a third of it is in the Fund for Excellence, and the annual budget is right around US$400,000.
That is mind-boggling.
I know. One way we were able to accomplish that is that, we stopped having hotels give us breakfasts for our meetings. Let’s see, what else? Mary, I think that the webinars may be coming back in a different format.
Oh, that’s great to hear.
So, rather than in an all day, partly in person, partly not deal, probably an hour here, an hour there, different topics and conducted through Zoom.
They were just 2 hours before I think, but yeah, that’s great. That’s good to hear.
Thank you for the policies and procedures manual.
You’re welcome.
Tom Pusateri (as Executive Directory) enjoys that immensely.
I think Tom was on the taskforce that helped put that together.
Just like any good syllabus, it continues to grow with time. Let’s see, membership-wise, what used to the Best Practices Conference is now the Annual Conference for Teaching (ACT). It used to be only in Atlanta, now it’s traveling around the country. Since it started, it’s traveled. Every year, it has brought in more people. This past October in Denver, it was actually overbooked, with something like 370 people in attendance. I think it was supposed to be 340 (we can check with Jordan Troisi on the numbers) and he actually closed registration, and then somebody asked Jordan, do you know if all the speakers are registered? They had not. So, one of those things that we are doing with that Annual Conference on Teaching is that, if you’re a member, you get discounted registration. If you’re not a member, then it costs you an extra 25 bucks, and you are now a member.
Good strategy.
So, our approach to get people to be members is that we just force them to.
I like that, I love that.
We’ll see if they renew. We haven’t been doing it long enough to know if it’s going to have that kind of a positive impact. Speaking of the diversity component Mary brought up, we’re also doing much more internationally and handing out memberships left and right, internationally. We’ll see if that bears fruit. Historically, when giving out free memberships, people generally have not renewed. So, we’re hopeful. We’re also picturing these webinars as a member benefit. So, that’s just another reason to join STP if the journal is not good enough for you. I understand the membership frustration. The STP Facebook group has 10,500 members. And yet, we’re still hanging right around 3,500 in STP membership. So, there was some talk when that STP Facebook group was created a few years ago, about whether we wanted to make that a members-only place. Part of the challenge with that would be to have somebody continually go in and make sure that everybody had renewed their membership, otherwise to come out. In the end, we decided that this would be a good opportunity to advertise to people who were interested in the teaching of psychology. So, periodically, stuff shows up there encouraging people to join. I know that the Membership Committee has talked about—I don’t know, to what extent they’ve done it, but to reach out to frequent posters on the STP Facebook page and encourage them to pony up US$25.
None of that has probably had anything to do with my presidential year; it’s just an update from the front lines. Probably the biggest change that happened last year, which was my presidential year, was moving the Graduate Student Teaching Association (GSTA) from the host model, where there was always an institution that hosted GSTA, and moving it instead to a committee that looks like the Early Career Psychologists Committee. So, we’ll see what happens. They’ve got another year to put that together and I think it’s January 2021, when that will go into effect. So, that will either be my greatest accomplishment or my biggest regret.
Too soon to have frustrations?
I’m so done. The best thing I’ve ever done, I will publicly say, absolutely the best thing I have ever done, but I’m done.
Sue, that distancing point is so interesting. I love the range of years that we’re all from because, I think being so intimately connected, and then you have that somewhat of an anticlimactic Past President year, and then in some ways, it’s like you walk off into the great wild yonder. I know I tried really hard to not interfere with what was going on, but it’s both difficult, and there’s a lot of ambivalence, I think, walking away, that push/pull of really wanting to weigh in on things but letting the new folks handle it. I wonder if you guys felt that too.
That’s one of the things I made notes to myself about before the call. I think our explosion as Jane calls it, octopus tentacles, has been really fabulous, but at the same time, I remember the days back when I started, when it was a much smaller group, and I miss that piece of it. I do feel disconnected from what’s happening, which I think is natural. Like Regan said, it’s important to get out of the way, but at the same time, I feel a little sad about not seeing people regularly, and the old days if you will.
I think we’ve also had a shift in the locus of what happens for STP once we made the decision to move the Best Practices Conference, now Annual Conference on Teaching, to different cities. I think we’re seeing a dramatic decline in participation at APA; at the same time, we’re seeing this increase in enrollment at STP, the ACT Workshop. So, I think people don’t identify with APA in the way that we used to, in the smaller, more intimate years. I’m not sure it’s entirely a bad thing because the spirit of what happens at ACT—I had the pleasure of being at a couple of them—it’s like the good old days. So, it’s still there, it’s just that most people who are there are not nearly as gray as we are, most of us on the call.
I’ve got some gray.
Yes, assuming if we have hair. I need to avoid discriminating against the follically impaired.
That would be me.
Yes, thank you, Wayne.
We’ve touched on this in some of the comments that you have made. What are the biggest changes you see in STP from when you were president? Elizabeth, you were president longest ago, so probably more change for you.
Everything has changed. It is an entirely different organization. We’ve mentioned a lot of things, but I’ll just give you one example. Before I was president, I had one job, which was Secretary, Treasurer, and Council Rep. Really! Very frustrating in a way because the job of the Treasurer was to try to keep the budget balanced, which could never be balanced. It was just very simple, the whole organization was. Now, when you look at the governance structure, and I was on the taskforce along with Mary, I think maybe somebody else, Tom Pusateri, Maureen McCarthy, to design a new governance structure.
Yeah, Bill Hill too.
Oh yes, that’s right, it was in Atlanta. It’s so complicated now. It’s hard to understand how we ever could have done with a President, a Vice President, and Secretary/Treasurer/Council Rep. There were three officers basically. Sometimes we were lucky enough to get another Council Rep, but not always.
Elizabeth, how much of that would you attribute to the difference in money that we have now, as opposed to what we had then?
I think it makes a big difference because I don’t think we could have expanded or tried any new things. We were just barely afloat financially. It was very frustrating being the Treasurer. Every penny mattered, literally. We did pass the hat at the Executive Committee meetings. We figured how much a breakfast would cost, and it would be like US$20, and then the hat would go around and everyone would throw in their US$20 because we couldn’t afford to have anybody else pay for that but ourselves. So, things have entirely changed. It was a very simple organization. That was nice in a way; you really knew everybody. Now, it’s just I feel really disconnected from it now.
I’ve heard the phrase that we’ve gone from a mom-and-pop organization to an almost multimillion dollar corporation.
Yes, I like that.
How about you, Wayne?
First the obvious. It’s just the growth has been exponential; it’s amazing. I think there must be 5 or 10 times as many people involved these days as there were in the old days. I think the programs and initiatives that we offer have multiplied twofold, and it’s just wonderful to see that. It’s so gratifying to see that. The growth has been just amazing.
Following up on your comment about your mom-and-pop shop versus what we are today: I recall when people asked me what it was like to be President, I said it consumed a fair amount of time—quite a bit of time. It’d be about like maybe chairing a department with five or six people in the department, something that you do with maybe 20%–30% of your time. I’m curious to see what Sue would say today, I have a hunch it doesn’t remotely resemble that. Today, it’s probably more like chairing the liberal arts college with 100 or 150 faculty. I mean, the growth is phenomenal.
Jane—your turn.
First, I would say I miss the fact that we don’t have Dancing Teachers of Psychology (DTOP), which used to be an offshoot of STP in the early days. I don’t know what’s wrong with these young people that they don’t want to go out and dance as part of gathering. I think Amy Fineburg coming in as president has promised there’ll be a dance, or a karaoke thing, or something, at the next ACT. So, I have hopes that something celebratory will be resurrected.
My comment really has more to do with the comparative sophistication of the people who join STP now. Back in the olden days, most of us joined STP because we were desperate to have teaching colleagues who might be able to share resources with us and because we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. That certainly created momentum around bonding. What strikes me with the increase in growth that we’ve had, paralleling what one can glean from the internet, I think members who do come to STP and get involved are so much more sophisticated than we were at their age. They know more about teaching. They are more conversant with pedagogical theory than I was. They have fairly pointed ideas about the kinds of things that they want to accomplish. I come away from conversations with the younger generation, just awestricken by how smart and savvy they are. My friends and colleagues back then were smart, but I don’t think we were particularly savvy. I think that what I’m pleased about is that the spirit that permeated STP that made it “my tribe” is still apparent and thriving. I still go to ACT and somehow get roped into workshops and taskforces despite the forces that discourage engagement after you have do your tour of duty as a leader. I’m impressed that the spirit, that generous spirit (“let’s give away what we have, let’s help people who do have that hunger, get stable on their feet and help them figure out their teaching voice”) hasn’t changed, and I’m really proud of that.
Changes you see, Mary?
One thing I want to add also is, we’ve always been a little bit ahead of the game in technology. As Wayne mentioned, it started back with Vinny, and then Jeff Stowell moved us forward. I’m not sure who the Internet Editor is now, but it’s clear we have also been strong in this area. Sue is definitely a leader in keeping us technologically up-to-date, and that I think has advanced the organization in ways that are hard to quantify. It’s so important for us to be able to reach people through technological advances.
Sue says that the person who’s the Internet Editor now is Jonathan Westfall of Delta State University.
Thank you.
What about you, Regan?
I think as far as communication goes, I’ve noticed two differences in communication. It varies by who’s doing the communicating. I think on one hand, and Sue mentioned earlier that the Facebook membership is 10,000 or something like that. I think something that’s very different now is there are more people in the general populace as it were, talking via, and through, and facilitated by STP, even if they’re not members. There’s just a lot of activity and sharing on the STP Facebook page, STP Twitter, and things like that. So, on one level, there’s a lot of communication. I see a lot more visibility of early career faculty, maybe because it’s through Facebook and things like that.
On the flip side, I think my sense is that there’s a lot less communication from leadership outward. I remember back in the early 2000s, there seemed to be, and I know a lot of this was Bill Buskist, who sent a lot of emails. I remember getting really into the STP loop around those years where, there seemed to be numerous Executive Committee updates and messages and things like that. I think over the last 5 or 6 years, that has dropped off dramatically. There are probably a number of different reasons including variations in the individual style, and Bill Buskist, but it’s just been really interesting to see that there’s a newsletter and things like that, but there doesn’t seem to be activity on the extended list or things like that.
Smith: Regan, just to let you know, Buskist was invited to be part of this group, and he declined. So, he’s changed a little bit in terms of his communication style. Sue?
Let’s see. In the last 11 months, not much changed.
Well, you’ve been around this group longer than that.
Frantz: In terms of the size of the organization, there are all kinds of pluses and minuses there. I just counted—we have 45 editors, chairs, and directors, and that’s in addition to the 10 officers on the Executive Committee and the Executive Director. So, it’s a massive organization, given the number of reviewers, and committee members, and everything else that falls under this area of directors, editors, and chairs. It’s hard for me to believe that there’s somebody in this organization who is not involved in some way. If you’re not involved, then you’re trying really hard to not be involved. Unfortunately, because of that size, now I’m picturing the octopus tentacles Jane mentioned.
The communication piece is very, very difficult. Largely what the Executive Committee has done in recent years has given those leadership roles of communication to the chairs and the directors and the editors, and tried to give them a forum in which to send that information out, whatever it is that they’ve got, rather than having words come from on high. I don’t know that that’s the best approach, but I think we’re still in this growing organization and still trying to feel out what it’s going to look like in the future. I don’t think we have any good sense of that.
Excellent point about Twitter, Regan. One thing that we do have is the international Twitter poster conference, which was most recently held November 1 and 2, 2019. It’s an opportunity for all those people out on Twitter to share their teaching posters from wherever it is they presented their teaching poster, to give them a wider audience. One of the things I noticed at ACT was all kinds of people. I don’t know how many accidental conversations there were where somebody said, “Oh, you are, Twitter handle…” “Yeah, and I am…” “Oh yeah.” They’d been communicating back and forth for 2 years, and for the first time, they had met in person. So, we’ll see what our bright new world looks like.
Mary earlier mentioned diversity. When would that have been, Mary?
I was President in 2006.
So, when was that first Diversity Task Force, Elizabeth?
That was when I was President, so it must have been 1992.
Okay. Can you think of other issues or topics like diversity that we’ve needed, people felt like we needed to get hold of, and pay attention to beyond teaching?
I think the SOTL initiatives that Regan mentioned are very important, and that’s been a huge step forward for us as an organization.
I’m going to add the emphasis that we’ve had on assessment; I think the very first Best Practices Conference was dedicated to assessment. If I had to revisit what accomplishments we had, I will say that the idea for that conference grew out of the Psychology Partnerships Project that a bunch of us served on, the Assessment All-Stars group, so I’d be happy to put my name on that as an achievement. But, I think over time, trying to develop resources that can help people with the ongoing and weirdly evolving assessment demands that people are facing, I see STP as being pretty central to helping people solve those problems.
It’s nice when we see ourselves addressing topics and issues for which we get some recognition outside of the psychology community. I think those are probably good examples. Where’s STP headed?
Internationally. So, more and more international initiatives. STP has connections with ESPLAT, the European Psych Learning and Teaching Community, and AusPLAT, the Australian Psychology Learning and Teaching Community, and both of those organizations are where STP was 50, 60, 70 years ago. They are just getting started with just a small group of 30 or 40 people, and they’re looking to STP for some guidance and some help in continuing their missions where they are.
What are we doing to try to help that, Sue? I know we’ve got a Director of International Programming position that Dana Dunn fills, where he travels to these international conferences, but I’m sure one person is not going to be adequate to help these other groups.
We have a Vice President for Diversity and International Relations, and there is a committee, the International Relations Committee. That’s a group that is specifically reaching out to these organizations. We have had people attend these groups. Susan Nolan went to ESPLAT a couple of times; I think Kelley Haynes-Mendez, who is currently our Vice President for Diversity and International Relations, was at the last ESPLAT; I was at the first AusPLAT a couple of years ago; Steve Chew was there this year. It’s something they’re holding every couple of years. So, definitely some stronger connections there. With Australia, Jacky Cranney, to no one’s great surprise, is really the crux of that. Paying more attention to Facebook and Twitter as international platforms, rather than just a U.S./Canadian platform. Susan Nolan is going to make this one of her presidential initiatives. So in 20 years, you can ask her how it went.
I will not be asking her in 20 years!
OK, I’ll ask. One of her presidential initiatives is expanding those international relations. We just approved at our last EC meeting, something like 100 free STP memberships for international people. So, anybody who goes to AusPLAT, or ESPLAT, or whatever, or APS’s international conference wherever they land, we’ll be able to say, “Here, join STP, here’s a free membership. I’d love to see you there.”
That sounds exciting.
We’ll see what else Susan Nolan comes up with or what her taskforce comes up with.
I think it’s also going to be interesting. I think with AmyFineburg’s presidency the year before, it’s going to be interesting to see the connections with high school psychology and with College Board as well, given Amy’s new position with College Board. I think there’s going to be some interesting synergies going on over there.
If we had a wish list for STP, for the future, back in the old days, it would have been we need more money. Sometimes it’s almost seemed like “now we have money, what are we going to do with it?” But, if you had one wish or dream that you could see STP accomplish, what would it be? Elizabeth?
The only thing I’ve been thinking about, which doesn’t really directly answer your question, is that we haven’t mentioned the fact that our teaching awards are endowed, which is something! I remember when we were passing the hat at the business meetings for teaching award money; so, the fact that there’s an endowment I think is a really great thing. Now, I don’t know if it pays because, I lost touch of that in the past couple of years, if it pays all the new awards that we’re giving out. But if it doesn’t, I would like to see that happen.
Wayne?
Wish list, all right. Before I respond to that, I’m just thinking about what we have not talked about that was important in terms of our history. I don’t think anyone’s given Bill Buskist credit for the reorganization, which I think he deserves most of the credit for that. I’ll admit to having been a little skeptical if that was really going to be an improvement on what we had, but I think it’s really worked out well, and I think that’s been a very, very important landmark in our historical progress that we perhaps didn’t give enough discussion to.
As for a wish list, this is pie in the sky; we’re not powerful enough to change this. I think when it comes to long running issues that are sources of frustration today, I think it’s almost as true as it was 30 years ago, that teaching doesn’t get the respect it deserves in academic circles. That people who work hard, teach well, and who are really creative in the classroom, don’t get recognition, especially in the bigger institutions; they don’t really get the rewards that the people who crank out the research do. I thought that was an unfortunate state of affairs from the day I entered academia. While we might have nibbled away at it a little bit over the years, I think that remains true. Yeah, if I had a wish list, I’d love to see 30 years from now that teaching gets more respect and is accorded more importance in the halls of academia.
Wayne, how might you do that? Do you have any ideas specific to that?
No, I don’t, I really don’t know. It’s something that has to unfold I think at the institutional level, rather than at the national level. I’m just not sure how we can impact that. So, it’s something that has to unfold at each individual university, and I’m not particularly optimistic.
If I could jump in, I think related to that, there are a couple of different things. Number one, I think we’ve mentioned the membership issue. To some extent, when an organization has a very large membership, it’s a louder voice that’s heard. So, yes, pie in the sky, but I think I’m still dreaming the dream that we’ll hit some way to finally have membership going up. Paradoxically, as a social psychologist, I’m going to say, it’s maybe something crazy like we’re too cheap, and maybe when our membership jumps to US$100 a year, people will go, “Oh, this is really something we need to be,” versus the US$25. So, that’s an aside.
I think together with more membership is, and Wayne, this is really building on your point, especially now as a center director, there are so many STP members, like Elizabeth Yost Hammer and Jordan Troisi, who are directors of Centers for Teaching and Learning. I see my role, and I see that I have the potential to make a real difference in how teaching is respected and rewarded on my campus.
I think it would be great if STP, with its expertise, and its members with expertise, could endorse and actually have models for some classic things such as teaching portfolios, or assessment of teaching practices, or things like that. If we could roll out “here’s the way to show what an effective teacher is,” maybe down the stream, not just universities, but different organizations, different places in academia, could take our model and go, “Oh yeah, the Society for Teaching of Psychology has put the work, got the evidence, established what effective teaching is. Let’s use that model, let’s put it into promotion and tenure (P&T), promotion and tenure documents and so on and so forth.” So, I think downstream, it would be great if we could grow to have the influence on universities and P&T committees where, like an APA of sorts, well, just like a department will adopt APA’s Guidelines Version 2.0, maybe one day they would adopt STP’s teaching portfolio or teaching effectiveness evaluation. Just a dream.
That’s a good dream.
It’s lovely. I hope your optimism is more prescient that my pessimism. I truly hope that.
I’d like to add to that. When I asked Wayne what could be done, something occurred to me right after I asked, which is, I think we should be trying to groom people who are sturdy enough to withstand things like being Council Rep, to get STP teacher-related candidates to run successfully for the presidency of APA. I think that currently, teaching tends to be a bit marginalized, and if we were able to have someone with a teaching platform that they weren’t embarrassed by, that might go a little way toward making things more respectable.
The other thing that I wanted to mention is, if I had a magic wand and could move some money around, I would bankroll some efforts to create national training for grad students who are planning on becoming teachers. I think there still is a fairly strong sentiment at most R1 institutions that teaching is what you do to support your research interests. I know that there are people out there like Missy Beers and Lindsay Masland who are thinking about ways to create systems that would help people who need it at the juncture in their careers when they most need it.
Mary, what about you?
What I was going to say is, unfortunately, I think what’s happening instead is, we’re creating teaching professorships where faculty can be promoted and, in some places even tenured, but they’re still, I feel, seen as second-class citizens.
Another related dream I have is to support graduate student teaching, but not to have it become the only way undergraduates are taught. There are, of course, models in place where graduate students get excellent training and do an outstanding job in the classroom. But what I see happening in some large research institutions is that the graduate students teach but are not provided enough training. It can also be seen as a way to get the full-time faculty out of teaching, rather than the full-time faculty being role models for good teaching. So, I think that’s an important piece of this whole equation.
Sue, do you have a wish list?
Wish list? Right now, I’m just trying to figure out how many of these ideas I can implement in the next 2 months. One of my big hopes is that we’ll get a PR person hired. There’s a lot of content in ToP for instance, that we would love to get into places like ScienceDirect, get into the New York Times. So, I’m trying to get our research a little more front and center and to have somebody who could be the centralized person for communicating out everything that STP is doing. I don’t think anybody really has a good solid grip on everything that STP is doing. Then, while we’re dreaming, I would go so far as to say, wouldn’t it be cool to have our own lobbyist? Somebody who could be out there advocating for more money, for graduate student specific to teaching and not the kind of training that typically APA is lobbying for. Nothing against that, it’s just a different thing.
I would love for us to give faculty some starter packs. So, you are teaching this course for the first time, here’s a little starter pack to get you going. You are wanting to give some workshops on your campus about studying for students or workshops for faculty on how they can help students study, well, here’s a premade starter pack, go out and do that. Then I thought, “Well, why not for academic administrator training?” That if we want to elevate the teaching of psychology at colleges and universities, let’s get more administrators who are coming out of teaching and psychology. Many of you have come out of teaching and psychology, so let’s train some people up.
Then, when Regan was talking about CTL training, I go, “CTLs? Then why not train people up for that?” So, you’re looking for your next career move, and you don’t want to go into administration, you want to go into faculty development, here are some mentoring, some guidance on how you can go about doing that.
Good. Given that this is an august group with many years of experience, and all having been at the top of STP, I thought it’d be nice to end with some notes that might encourage younger readers. In a sentence or two, what has STP meant to you?
For me, it’s given me a family when I had some tragedy in my life. But, that’s aside from whether they’re teachers or not. It’s given me a lot of resources that I could use when I first started teaching.
It has helped me build my identity as a teacher. It’s made me proud to be a teacher; it’s made me feel like I could unabashedly hold my head high as somebody who cared about teaching, even though I also care about research. It was that teaching part that it’s great to have a home for.
I think for me, I mentioned earlier that I consider STP to be my tribe. I really do feel like it’s the place that’s allowed me to become immersed in what I loved, but also gave me all kinds of opportunities to soar from there, not only from what I learned about teaching, but from the amazing friendships that have endured through time. I have to say, I continue to be dazzled by the new friendships that I pick up every time I attend STP-related functions. We are so rich in people.
I guess my comment would be that STP has been a source of inspiration for me. It’s just been amazing to meet so many people who are so committed, who are so hardworking, so creative, and so focused on teaching. This is true when I go to the teaching conferences as well, but also in relation to the STP meetings. I’m just so impressed. It just makes you want to go back home and work all the harder. So, for me, STP has been a very inspiring kind of experience.
I think it’s home. I can’t think of a time where people in STP weren’t supportive of other people. I think that is what STP does. It reaches out to people, it offers support, it offers innovation, and it allows friendship circles to grow, and it’s just been a wonderful place to call home for my career.
Everybody is so darn nice.
Right. Thank goodness.
My first full-time job, I was in the psychology department, and I was actually also in the sociology department. My degree is social psych, but I had to explain to them that sociology really is a whole different field, and you’ve got to hire somebody, and they did. In that first job, I had no idea what I was doing. I’d been adjunct for a couple of years, and knew enough I wanted to do it, but I didn’t know exactly what it was I was trying to do. At the time, it was the email list—it was the PsychTeacher email list. I don’t remember when that came along, but before that, it was TIPS, which is now defunct. The number of people I just met through there, and they were all STP people, and I held on to them like a lifeline. When I changed jobs seven years later, and came where I am now, which was 19 years ago, I felt like it was time for me to give back to this community that had given me so much.
Thank you Sue. I think everybody on this call knows what you’re talking about. Thank you to everybody. I appreciate all of you participating.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Professional transcription of the original recording from the budget of the STP Archivist/Historian.