STP at 75: Conferences and Programming

We invited each of you in particular because, in some form or fashion, each of you have been involved in the history of STP conferences and STP programming at other conferences, and I’d like to get your perspectives on that history. I will try to keep us on time, but please feel free to jump in at any point. I sent you a couple of questions to consider, so let’s start with the first question. How do you think STP conferences and programming have contributed to the teaching of psychology over the years?

I think the answer to that varies with what time period you’re looking at. For this historical overview, the time period we’re examining is from the early 1990s to the present. In the early 1990s, basically everything was held at the annual APA convention, such as symposia, posters, invited addresses, and the annual STP business meeting. There were minor changes to that programming during the 1990s. For example, around the mid-1990s, I forget the exact date, STP took over the G. Stanley Hall Lectures. Dana, I think you were involved in some of that early on. The Harry Kirke Wolfe Lecture started, so we had some new invited programs, but there really wasn’t much other than the convention at that point. Janie, you’ve been around long enough. Is that your perception?

Absolutely. In fact, I was trying to look back before we started today to figure out when I started working with the Best Practices Conferences and organizing those. I think I started around 2008 or 2009.

Was it that late?

Dana, you were there at the beginning. The first one was 2001 I think. It was the one that focused on assessment, which really wasn’t technically an STP conference. STP came on as a cosponsor, but that first one originated out of the assessment subgroup at the meeting of the Psychology Partnerships Project. It was so successful, and STP decided to continue the Best Practices Conferences in the following year, focusing on a different topic each year.

All this expanded programming over the years were such a key mission of STP. It’s been amazing to watch it spread, and now with Dana. Dana, are you still in charge of the international aspect?

I’m going to try to hold on to that as long as I can.

You’re a smart man.

I know there is at least someone on this call who wants a piece of that action, but I’m going to block him as long as I can. I was just thinking, Neil, when was that first APS conference where we had the teaching programming? You were in charge of that first one at APS.

I don’t remember when the first one was, but I do remember that in the late 1990s, there was a great concern among the Executive Committee of STP that teachers were no longer going to the annual APA convention. And so, the effort was made to reach out to where people were going to conventions, whether it was APS or discipline-centered conventions or some other kind of event. But a lot of what occurred around that time stemmed from the assessment that teachers were no longer as likely to attend the annual APA convention.

Yes, I recall those conversations too. Due to a number of factors, the travel budgets for many college teachers were shrinking, and because the costs associated with attending the APA convention in a major city were relatively high, many faculty at teaching-oriented institutions could not afford to attend.

I remember in 2002, when we did the Teaching Institute, I worked with Jane Halonen and Elizabeth Swenson, and there was real interest from the folks at APS and I think the President at that time, Alan Kraut, really wanted us there. We were surprised by how many people came to our sessions. We tried to design sessions, as Neil was saying, that would interest people who are doing research but also teaching in experimental areas. So, we tried to design those kinds of sessions for them. We rode the scholarship of teaching wave as well in developing some of those sessions.

It’s interesting that folks point out that it was in the 1990s that there was concern about not very many teachers coming to APA, and in fact, that was one of the reasons why the movement of the awards for STP and a number of other events, the business meeting for example, got moved from APA to what is now the Annual Conference on Teaching. I believe that first year was either 2017 or 2016.

2016.

2016, yes.

One of the interesting things I ran across is a 1991 quote from the then President Joe Palladino in Wight and Davis, who wrote a history of STP’s first 50 years, that suggested that the Division had failed to be where its constituency could find it because the meetings were at the APA convention and the majority of teachers lacked the funding or interest to attend the convention. So, this concern goes all the way back to the very early 1990s.

For what it’s worth, the Annual Conference on Teaching is now moving across the country. In 2017, we were in San Antonio. Then the year after, Phoenix, and we just wrapped in Denver. We have been experiencing tremendous growth. Over those last 3 years, we have averaged 19% growth per year.

That’s wonderful. I think around 2008, when I did the first Best Practices after Bill, they were talking pretty seriously about shutting down the conference altogether. So, now look where we are. It’s just great to see that we’re here.

If you remember, Janie, that was because we had a year where the conference lost a lot of money because of low attendance.

I was also looking at Bill’s timeline. I think it was somewhere around 2003 when we decided because we were going to expand our programming, we needed to have an organizational structure that was much more robust. We previously had a program committee, and about the time we started doing those teaching institutes and they started to become popular, was the time that we went to a Director of Society Programming, and then we had two Associate Directors. Again, one Associate Director was specifically focused on the programming at APS. I think it just fit nicely for psychology because you had the whole effort around scholarly teaching and the scholarship of teaching, so we were able to use that and it was a success in terms of doing the Teaching Institute.

Neil, I’m trying to remember, what was the first year that you did the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) preconference?

2002.

That really was our first major venture into doing something significant at some other meeting. I don’t think we did anything significant before this.

Well, you know, I vaguely remember someone doing something in association with the developmental psychology meeting.

You mean the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD)?

Yes, it would’ve been SRCD.

I think there was some discussion of doing that, but I don’t think it ever came to fruition.

For what it’s worth, as a graduate student, the teaching preconference at SPSP was really my first significant exposure to STP and thus began a long, storied history.

I think that testimonial addresses the larger question that Linda posed. What are the contributions of this programming? I think one of the things that it did contribute was to expand opportunities for graduate students, faculty, researchers, and others to learn about STP; to come to a conference; and to get involved in the organization and the professorial life. And then at the same time, it highlighted for the discipline as a whole, whether it’s at APS or the social psychology meeting, there are teachers out there, and this is part of the professional work that we do. I think those were both contributions that this stuff was making.

Just to add briefly to that. I went into my second year of graduate school a little beleaguered by the heavy research life that I was living, and it was really an exposure to a different way of thinking about what it meant to be a professional in a faculty position. So, in addition to meeting those folks, getting connected to STP, it was the exposure to another way of life as it would come to be, never looking back. Truth be told, I don’t know that at that time I would’ve felt comfortable just sort of branching out directly to a teacher-oriented conference. I think my ticket in was that I was going to the research conference and then tacking on the teaching stuff.

Yeah, my experience was the same. Marky Lloyd brought me to a teaching conference. I think it was at Kennesaw State, and I couldn’t believe it. I was used to going to these huge neuroscience conventions where everybody was pretty cutthroat. Then, I went to this conference, and everyone was nice and helpful, and it was just a breath of fresh air. Like you, Jordan, I never looked back. That was a life-changing event.

Yeah, I agree. At the Southeastern Conference on the Teaching of Psychology, you learned early on that it was just a community of scholars working together on teaching, and it was just so beneficial for new faculty members, faculty who were going through tenure and promotion, or just learning how to teach better. It was just a wonderful community of people and professionals working together.

Absolutely, and I think that’s why they’ll continue to be a success because people do want to see each other and be part of that community. Although that might change in the future, I don’t know, but for now, I think it’s working.

I think we need to give credit to the teaching conferences that were established early on, starting in 1985 with Joe Palladino’s conference (the Mid-America Conference for Teachers of Psychology [MACTOP]). Those regional teaching conferences set a model that ultimately STP adopted.

I agree. In Barney Beins’s STP presidential address, he specifically identified Palladino’s conference as a kind of starting point for a number of teachers who went on to serve in leadership positions in STP. When I began attending MACTOP in the late 1980s, I was introduced to people such as Barney Beins, Charles Brewer, Jane Halonen, Dave Johnson, Bill Hill, Tom Pusateri, and (of course) Joe Palladino, among many other influential figures in the teaching of psychology. MACTOP also served as the model for the development of other regional teaching conferences, including the Midwest Institute for Teachers of Psychology.

In many ways, attending those regional conferences lit the fire under individual people to begin expanding programming in a lot of different ways. You all are talking about a culture of collaboration that leads to another question I sent to you. A lot of this expansion around programming was done through STP’s attempt to collaborate with other organizations. I think those efforts were based on the fact that STP members are such a collaborative group. They always share with each other, and I always found teachers of psychology to be willing to promote student learning through the work that they’re doing and then the scholarly work behind that. What’s your memory about how we collaborated with, Val mentioned APS, but with these other organizations, the regional APA conferences, for example? How did you see that coming about?

One of the challenges when STP started doing programming at the regional psychology meetings was that another organization existed, that was already doing that, the Council of Teachers of Undergraduate Psychology (CTUP). In essence, they owned teaching programming at the regionals. In the mid-1990s, I believe it was Marky Lloyd who reached out to collaborate with CTUP and started appointing the regional coordinators who moved us into that area.

Yeah, I think it seems like sometimes it was tricky to go into other conferences and try to understand their culture because every conference just had a different way of doing things. So, there were some challenges there, but I think STP did really well working through all that, especially having some great representatives from STP that often were involved on boards at the other conferences anyway, so there was some nice meshing.

Janie is right. There was a lot of overlap between STP members and the regional coordinators for CTUP, and that helped.

It’s also worth remembering that it’s not just how STP has collaborated with other organizations but also within APA. When I started the APA Programming Directorship many years ago it seems now, Victor Benassi was the STP President at the time, and he was at the forefront of what is now the collaborative programming at APA. Bill can certainly speak to this as well. He was looking at how we can partner with Division 3, which was Victor’s Division. Making sure that we had programs that would build both divisions, and that started collaborations that we continue today. Sometimes it’s formalized by the President of the Division, but often it’s just organic between the program chairs for different divisions. That’s been really nice because it’s also brought in members from divisions outside of STP.

Why don’t we talk a little bit about the future. We’re all participating in this panel through virtual technology. Neil’s in Portugal, and the rest of us are in other places. I don’t know where Dana is. Dana, are you in another country?

No, I wish. I’m in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in my cluttered office.

It’s interesting to think about the future. What do you think is going to happen to conferences and programming in tomorrow’s world?

In 2008, we did the first online e-workshop, I think that’s what we called it. Gosh, I know we did one on biology, and I think we did one on history, and those were fun, but they didn’t take the place of that face-to-face meeting. So even though I do think eventually things will become more tied to technology, I don’t know if you can replace being in the same space together because even the online conference did not do that.

Today, there are virtual learning communities of all kinds, including one I’m serving on, for the Introductory Psychology Initiative. We’ve got faculty learning communities within that for individuals working on their courses. There are Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) that exist out there, but that said, a lot of people got worried about MOOCs about 5 or 10 years ago, and lo and behold, they have not taken over higher education in ways that a lot of people thought. Maybe this is just because my research area is interpersonal belonging, but I tell you what, there’s a lot to be said about a face-to-face meeting, especially with people who you will collaborate with, you are starting to collaborate with, you work together professionally, and you endure stressors together. These are the kinds of things that bring people together and require comradery as well as professional development opportunities. I think in some ways, STP has helped people navigate both professional issues and the ins and outs that personally come along with teaching, teaching identity, issues of tenure review, and moving from your 20s on into retirement. I think there will always be a place for the face-to-face. With the increased presence of technologies, it can be helpful. But we are still, at the same time, seeing increased attendances at conferences like ACT. It’s not that when one goes up, the other goes down.

Yeah. I think some of the changes that have been made over the last several years are going to help continue to keep us relevant. Things like, well Jordan you mentioned earlier, we now move around country, which is brilliant. Thank God! It finally worked out, having to negotiate all those hotels and things. I also think it’s really important that leadership be at the conference and follow our members there. I think we are staying relevant by doing those things.

Also, as Janie and Linda suggested earlier, one of the great things about attending teaching-focused conferences (and working with other STP members) is the opportunity to collaborate and socialize with such fun, helpful people who are like-minded in the sense that they are committed to maximizing our students’ learning experiences.

Dana, I’d like to hear you talk about the international focus. That’s relatively new, and I don’t know a lot about what’s going on with that.

There’s not a lot to tell except one of the things that I’ve noticed in the two APS conferences I’ve gone to, one in Vienna and one in Paris, it amazed me the number of people who showed up to the teaching presentations, which I think is great. That speaks volumes because the one thing that I find interesting about many people in Europe, when they see the word college teaching or the phrase college teaching, they assume that’s high school teaching. You have to use the word university, as I learned quite by accident. In any case, then they become interested once you explain to them what you’re about. They don’t talk about those sorts of issues. There’s not a pedagogical tradition in that culture. It’s still very lecture-centered, but they’ve been interested. Now what remains to be seen. One of the things I’ve done at the conferences is collected names and addresses and email addresses in the hopes that after they get a gratis year of our STP membership, they’ll come back. I don’t know whether that’s happened yet, but I’ve been impressed at the amount of traffic our booths received, so something’s going on.

Are we doing anything else at these international conferences on teaching?

Part of the problem is finding other ones, besides APS. I mean there is the one, it’s the Vancouver International Conference on the Teaching of Psychology, in Canada, it’s like a biannual thing. I don’t know if it’s going to happen again. I haven’t heard anything. Sometimes what looks like teaching conferences turn out in many cases to be educational conferences, or there will be a conference that’ll be very far away, and they’ll have a tiny little piece on teaching. It’s hard to find something that works as well as APS or the International Convention of Psychological Science conference.

I’m trying to think about those broader-based teaching conferences that are international, not just psychology focused, and whether we would want to more actively try to go to some of these conferences. I can’t think of the names of them, but I still get ads from them.

Some of those interdisciplinary ones, Bill? I see those emails as well.

So, I’m wondering if there’s sort of an international parallel. I’m in Professional and Organizational Development (POD), although I’m not thinking about POD. Isn’t there one called the Teaching Professor, if I’m not mistaken? One like that that’s abroad. Where it is sort of interdisciplinary teaching, it’s not like just psychology teaching.

I’ve attended a few of The Teaching Professor annual conferences, but I think that all or most of their conferences are held in the United States.

There’s a couple of those, and I’m just blanking on what they are.

That would fit too, with going back to what Linda was saying, in terms of where academia seems to be going, in terms of interdisciplinary work. Some of these interdisciplinary conferences might be a good direction to see if there’s some interest.

I know there are some psychology research–oriented conferences that exist either every year or every other year or so abroad. Now that’s different than a conference that already has a significant teaching component abroad. But, for example, my colleagues went to a positive psychology conference that was in Australia last summer. Is there any interest in the disciplinary ones, tacking onto that disciplinary conference that may exist abroad?

Like the regionals, but not regional?

Well to be honest, part of the other challenge is that I had a conference in Canada this past year, that looked very interesting, and now of course I’m not going to remember the name of it. When I contacted them and asked, they said, “I would love to have you.” Then I said, “Look, wait, we don’t really need much. We just need a booth where I can set up a table and so on.” They said, “That’s fine. Those are $6,000.” I said, “No, you don’t understand. My budget doesn’t allow for that, number one. Number two, that strikes me as rather expensive.” She said, “I can’t help you, except you can call me back in 2 months and if we don’t have a sufficient number of people, I’ll drop the price.” So, I did, and she dropped it $5000. I said, “I’m sorry. I can’t do that. That’s not reasonable.” I was just like come on, work with me.

One thing that occurs to me that we might do to further international connections is to identify speakers from other countries who give presentations at teaching conferences in the States. So, faculty here know there are people interested in teaching elsewhere, maybe there are some groups that are interested in teaching. There used to be a very active one in the United Kingdom. We can make connections and learn in that way.

We started doing some of that at ACT. Jordan, has there been an ongoing press for international programming at ACT?

In terms of like bringing in speakers or other things like that?

Yes.

I’d say we haven’t made an explicit push. We were hoping to do it, and this year, we did have some folks. We had a handful of folks from Canada, and we also had a handful of folks from other countries as well. It hasn’t been an explicit goal lately.

On the APA side, that would really rely on the Division President extending something like an invited address, so we could give the international speaker a registration waiver, but unless they’re going to be here for a sabbatical or some other reason, it could be really cost prohibitive.

I know there was a time we were targeting some of our programming to high school teachers. Are high school teachers still participating in STP?

Oh yeah.

I’d say in terms of conferences, we have a little bit of high school participation, and I actually was on a conference call with some individuals within STP who were active on the high school side of things. There’s talk of trying to figure out ways to get more high school teachers to ACT, but there are some structural questions including time-off related matters to attend the whole conference, price, and the value that their administrators place on individuals going to conferences as training experiences. We’ve done some things to target recruitment, but there are also questions of how much that really alters what happens at the conference. Not that we’re not game for having those conversations, but does the conference, as it stands, provide great value for high school teachers or might it not, and if so, what do we do about that?

Another way to approach this is to encourage STP representatives, for example, people in leadership positions, to attend some of the regional conferences that are designed specifically for high school psychology teachers. I know there are a few of these conferences in the Midwest, one in the Chicago area, called Chi-Teaching of Psychology in Secondary Schools (TOPSS), and one in Milwaukee that’s organized by Kent Korek that attracts a larger number of high school teachers every year.

What’s happening with APS programming in recent years? Years ago, we took on the Teaching Institute and we had several hours during the regular APS convention. Is that the same?

I think Eric Landrum’s in charge of that now, isn’t he?

Yes. It was Jeff Holmes and now it’s Eric Landrum. Dana and I were at APS at the same time a couple of years ago. I can attest, much still happens there. There’s an opening night presentation that Dana gave a couple of years ago. Then, I was one of the invited ones. The next day was a pretty full day of programming. Does that sound right to you, Dana?

Yes. It’s a full day. I haven’t gone since that one, but it’s a full day of programming. There’s an opening speaker and then a closing speaker, and I think there’s poster sessions, and there used to be round tables. I don’t know if those still happen. But yeah, that’s still happening.

I was there last year. It was very well attended and very active. I think that’s thriving.

They also do a good job of bringing in some big-name researchers who apply teaching to their talks, some more than others of course. Because it’s APS they’re often there anyway, so sometimes you get some real well-known presenters in a way that we can’t get at ACT.

Jordan, I have a question. Since we’re talking about the future of conferences, is ACT at this point self-sustaining?

Well the funds still come from STP, but we are not at a point where we are “profitable.” I would say a big reason for that is that the Executive Committee of STP has primarily been interested in keeping it as a relatively low-cost, professional development opportunity. I was talking with some folks lately about our expenses, in terms of food and beverage and audio visual (AV) . Those are not paid for by the registration fee. The registration fee is not enough for that. As I sometimes say, we’re in sort of a perverse situation where the more we grow, the more money we lose. Now that said, the Executive Committee hasn’t been interested in increasing the registration fee. While it makes it easier for me to tell people how cheap the conference is, at this point, we’re not self-sustaining in terms of straightforward profitability.

The great thing is that STP can put their money into what is valued. The other thing is when you started moving around the country, now you’ve got to negotiate contracts every year with new hotels, and I know how hard that is. Bill, I know you know how hard that is.

Yeah, and Jordan mentioned the AV equipment. We never really had to pay for that back in the early years. We hauled it in from Kennesaw State, and they allowed us to use it for free. That was a substantial cost savings.

Now we’re looking at 10–20 grand a year for it.

That’s the total for the conference?

Just the AV.

I think it’d be cheaper to go buy the equipment and haul it there.

A lot of places you are not allowed to bring in equipment because of hotel rules.

Right. We’ve gotten such better rates on AV from an outside provider than we have in-house that we’re not even interested in hotels that will provide you with in-house. It’d be 3 times the cost to use the in-house service.

For those who are curious, our bill this year was about $15,000 for AV. You could get a car for that.

Exactly! About the cost of my first house.

Next year, we’ll just ditch the screens, and someone will win a car.

ACT’s going to be in Pittsburgh, right? Pittsburgh is a reasonable city in terms of cost, I would assume.

Yes, Pittsburgh is very reasonable. We were in Denver this year. We actually found Denver to be more reasonable than we might have anticipated at first. We’re still keeping an eye on cities that are great places to visit but not prohibitively expensive. We’re never going to be in New York or San Francisco or at least not anytime soon.

And I think that’s a good thing. As Jordan suggests, if ACT can be held in appealing destinations that aren’t superexpensive, it will likely attract a larger number of teaching faculty and possibly more high school teachers as well.

Where’s ACT after Pittsburgh?

Louisville.

I think we are coming to a natural close here. Is there anything else, any other questions, thoughts, or observations that you all might have as we wind down?

This isn’t a question, but this is a perspective that I think is valuable, or at least I think it’s valuable because it’s coming out of my brain. I think something that has really been valuable for STP, both when we look over a long history and over a somewhat more recent history, is the way that when we go to a place and we add people and bring people in, just how much of a pickup and the continuation that those individuals might have within it. I sort of came in sideways through a research conference and then felt like these are my people, and this is where I want to go. Whether it’s at a regional conference, a research-oriented conference that moves place to place, a big conference or now with ACT’s moving from place to place across the country. When we move to a new place, we’ve got a lot of folks and we’ve got a lot of them who say they will come again. I think the more we sort of reach out and go to different places and start getting the message out, the more effective this programming has been for the growth of the organization. Not that I’m tracking the numbers per se, but I think people hang on and when we find them and they grab ahold, they’ll hang on for a long time.

A lifetime, yeah, that’s well said Jordan.

We talked a minute about high school teaching. How are we addressing, in any conference, teaching at the graduate level? And Jamie, I am wondering if there are more sessions on that topic included in our programming at APA?

In recent years, I did see more proposals there. The Graduate Student Teaching Association (GSTA) remains active, and STP continues to donate a programming hour from GSTA each year. So yes, I would say that there continues to be interest, and we’re seeing more submissions from graduate students and even undergraduate students.

I’m talking about teaching graduate courses.

Yes, and how to teach graduate students and graduate courses in general, correct.

Because most of what we’ve done historically seems to focus on the undergraduate level.

Now, I will say Bill, where I do see a focus on graduate education, even more so recently, is on the clinical training side. Thinking back to an earlier comment, not only do we see education proposals but also a lot of training proposals, so we have to parcel those out during the review process.

I remember thinking about this years ago when I came back from a conference. When you stop to think about the potential impact of teachers coming to these conferences, getting energized, and then they going back to their home departments. If one faculty member shares the pedagogy that they’ve learned about, that can be spread within their department, across their college, and across their university. When you really start to think about the impact that these years of programming have had, the people who really should be benefiting most from this is our students. You think about the number of students who we’ve probably touched with these kind of professional development opportunities for faculty, it’s pretty amazing.

I agree. Psychology has always been about a lot of those theories that involve learning and teaching. Cognition, metacognition, memory, and learning, so you’re right. I think STP is really taking that, and the impact that we’ve had using our own psychology to impact teachers has just been amazing.

Another thing I noticed is that these conferences can contribute to enhancing departmental relations and community. Across the many years I’ve done this, I’ve seen cases where departments begin to come to a conference together or at least several members of a department attend together. So, it’s not just about learning about pedagogy. It’s also a chance to get away from the day-to-day departmental functions and touch base with each other and build a community.

As is quite true but ironic, sometimes I get to know my departmental colleagues the best when we’re across the country at a conference.

Well it sounds like we’re coming to an end. Any last opportunity for final words or thoughts?

I’d like to just say that, kind of what I mentioned earlier, that I think it’s wonderful to watch over all these years for STP to continue to adapt and evolve because there have been so many changes across the years that you’ve all seen too. Restructuring the executive committee, journal changes, programming opportunities, resources, I mean it just goes on and on. I just hope even beyond programming that we just continue to adjust to the needs of our members.

Absolutely. That triggered a memory about a membership survey. Remember when we did that, years ago? Even then we were thinking about our members.

I can’t thank you all enough for joining the session today. It has been great meeting new friends and seeing old ones.