Graduate School Panel, model chapter award & Concession Stand Fundraising

Hi All,

We're back in gear and revving up for a lot of events this semester.

First on hand is the graduate school panel that will be featured during our second Psi Chi Meeting on Tuesday, September 25 from 11 am - 12 pm. If you're interested in going to graduate school in psychology this is a place where you can learn answers and ask questions!

Speakers: Caitlin Burk (Experimental Psychology), Chelsey Bohr (Clinical/Counseling Psychology), Brea Morrison (I/O Psychology), and Carly Horne (School Psychology)

Faculty Speaker: Dr. John Wade (Licensed Counseling Psychologist)

We are also planning to do another football concession stand fundraiser. If you don't know anything about this, basically registered student organizations on campus are given the opportunity to earn money from Sodexo by running their concession stands at ESU football games. It's usually quite a fun time, where you make the best of your selling skills and get to watch the game as well! On September 7, Psi Chi ran one of the concession stands for a high school football game and made a whopping $150, so it's a really easy way to make money for our organization!

You also get 1 point per hour you work towards your total points for a discount on travel to the APA conference held in HAWAII next August.

If you are interested we are running another concession stand on October 13 (homecoming weekend). Emails will be sent out in advance for volunteers.

Here's an old pic of psi chi officers at a concession stand (did I mention we get free food there too!):

Last but not least the ESU Chapter of Psi Chi was told recently that we won a $100 Model Chapter of the Year Award! Woohoo!

Congrats ESU Psi Chi! And this is all thanks to the hard work and dedication of all of our brilliant officers and faculty adviser, who despite personal crises work just as hard as ever at getting our stuff done! So thanks Amanda Martens (President), Dinusha Warusavitharana (Vice President), Andrea DuBois (former Secretary), Chelsey Bohr (current Secretary), Tasia Farley (Fundraising Chair), Liuhan Cai (Treasurer), Kristi Gildner (Historian), and last but not least Dr. John Wade (Faculty Adviser).

Welcome back!

Greetings fellow Psi Chi members and hopefuls!

Welcome back to a brand new, no-doubt jam-packed semester! I hope you are all settling in and not cracking under the pressure ;)

Here's a list of all the psi chi meeting dates we will have this semester:

September 6
September 25
October 11
October 30
November 15
November 27

We will be posting updates the latest and the greatest of what's coming up, so stay tuned!

Meanwhile, here's a brief summary of our trip to APA in Orlando Florida (pictures are posted on our facebook page):

Although sticky, the weather was pretty gorgeous with no rain and not a lot of sun either. The Psi Chi team had a blast and we got to see a variety of presentations, with a wonderful bonus of being able to see the great Dr. Philip Zimbardo present a session on TED talks (famous person + TED talks = truly awesome) AND some of us got to take person photographs with him (I know, I know, totally nerdy - but hey, this is the hollywood of psychology!). Many of us got to make some wonderful network connections for future graduate school prospects.

On top of the wonderful sessions, we all got to explore some of Orlando's most famous locations: DisneyWorld and Universal Studios (some were lucky enough to register early and get a special personalized, extremely discounted trip, to Epcot - yours truly was not one of these people sadly). We all had a blast, and best of all, we all got to do it all at a ridiculously discounted price thanks to Psi Chi and the hard work from our wonderful president, Amanda Martens.

Next year, APA will be held in Honolulu, Hawaii.....so if you've ever hunkered the desire to see Hawaii you'll never get a better chance to do it for so little expense to yourself! So hope to see you all at participating events and earn your points to go to Hawaii!

Your vice president,
Dinusha

Wrap up of Spring 2012

Yes I know it's been a while but school life just took over and it took a ridiculously long time to free some time to wrap up our fabulous Spring semester! Many apologies everyone!

Ever since the success that was the Kiss the Animal contest, our psi chi members have been busy bees! Here's a run down of the events that took place after Kiss the Animal along with accompanying pictures (when we have them!):

Psi Chi-ers donated their valuable time to help out in the community by helping judge at the Emporia Area Regional Science and Engineering Fair (EARSEF) - wasn't that a mouthful? - and by helping clean up after the tornado at Harveyville - there were some tears shed but our psi chi-ers left knowing they made a difference!

Emporia Area Regional Science and Engineering Fair

Harveyville Tornado Clean-Up

The next few events that went down are presented in no particular order:

• A joint endeavor with our fellow psychology-related clubs including SSIOP and Psychology Club, where students got a chance to earn some research experience by collecting data for a survey on local car buying habits that helped us earn a whopping $250!
• A joint endeavor with the ESU Office of International Education to throw a Spring Concert for students and the community that featured a local bluegrass band. I must say I was pleasantly surprised at how lovely the music was (like most snobby young people I probably had some seriously negative misconceptions about bluegrass music that I was very pleased was blown out of the water!)
• Attendance and presentation of posters at a regional conference: Great Plains
• Presentation of a Webinar on Graduate Study in Psychology which was prompted in response to requests for more informational sessions! You asked, we listened! Psi Chi was able to get a special discount from APA to present this particular webinar at ESU! - We are also open to more suggestions if you have any!
• Psi Chi helped out the local community by making May Day cards for the elderly and helping clean our designated highway that we have adopted (we even got to see horses! see pics below)

Working hard making cards!

Lastly, we had an amazing psi chi induction ceremony with a record number of inductees! We also had an absolutely amazing key note speaker, Major George M. Boyd,  who was so coveted that ESU had a special event on campus prior to the induction ceremony to allow non-members to appreciate him! Special thanks to our amazing former secretary, Andrea DuBois, for arranging to have him come speak. Our initiate group was so large this semester that we had to scramble to find an alternate location to hold the ceremony!

Attendees awaiting the beginning of induction

Cabinet members of Spring 2012 and Major & Mrs. Boyd

New inductees and cabinet members

Inductees lined up and ready for induction

New inductees, cabinet members and speaker

Major George M. Boyd giving his key note speech to the new inductees

Cabinet members inducting new inductees

New inductees all lined up

Our secretary jump starting the ceremony

Our member of the semester award recipient: Josh Gilbertson!

Well that's all for now folks! Look forward to hearing about our escapades in Orlando, Florida, as we attend the annual APA convention this year!

 

Kiss the Animal Contest!

So today we had our amazing Kiss the Animal Contest! This was a fundraiser for Psi Chi and we got 5 psychology faculty members to run for candidates to kiss a mysterious animal! Students and faculty members used $$ to vote for their favorite - or perhaps in this case - least favorite faculty member!

The candidates (and their final count of votes) were:

Dr. Schrader ($67)
Dr. Grover ($46)
Dr. Daniels ($32)
Dustin Elliott ($8.55)
Dr. MacDonald ($4.02)
 
What a success guys! It went off even better than the cabinet hoped for!

 This is our wonderful secretary revved up the crowd before the grand reveal of the animal!

Faculty members waiting with bated breath! One of them has a clown-phobia...can you guess which one?

Josh and Myles (Psi Chi members) slowly bring forth the mysterious animal to be kissed! Dr. Schrader looks nervous!

...and the grand reveal:

Blossom - our fabulous female clown! Okay, I know you may think this is a cop-out but give us a chance to explain! We did try to get a real animal but a lot of red tape and bureaucracy involved with protecting animals from being harmed (by kissing!) prevented us from being able to get an animal on time. So we improvised - and did even better! Blossom did a SPECTACULAR JOB and we send her the warmest thanks and the sloppiest kisses in gratitude! She did a few magic tricks, entertained the public quite a bit, and then proceeded to make Dr. Schrader miss the balloon animal and kiss her cheek instead!

Blossom made all the faculty members kiss the balloon animal first and Dr. Schrader got to keep it as a souvenir!

So for those of you who missed the excitement you can watch our video on it here: Kiss the Animal Contest

Here are some parting pictures! We had great fun and those who participated we hope you did too! For those who couldn't make it we hope this blog and the facebook updates helped you experience some of it and we know you were there in spirit! Hope to see you guys at the next event!

A big thanks to Tasia (our fundraising chair - she's in the pic above), Amanda (our hardworking president), and Andrea (our wonderfully dedicated secretary)! All three worked very hard to make this event a success!

How do your points work?

So folks, the dilemma of points is indeed a frequently brought up question. How exactly do they work and what do you get out of earning them?




Let's break it down first:

To get Psi Chi rewards, a member must achieve at least 15 points added over the fall and spring semesters in the following manner: 

1. Attend 1 or more Psi Chi monthly meetings for 3pts

• 3 pt. = Attending a Psi Chi monthly meeting

2. Participate in 2 or more of the 1pt items below for 2pts

• 1 pt. = Attending a department social activity
• 1 pt. = Attending the initiation banquet and ceremony
• 1 pt. = Bringing a food item to a fundraiser or social activity

3. Participate in one community service project for 4pts

• 4 pts. = Community Service (i.e., Highway Cleanup or Rebuilding Together)

4. Participate in one Fundraiser for 6pts

• 2 pts/hour = Working a fundraiser (Kiss the Animal Contest, Bake Sale, May Day Baskets, etc.)

So what does this mean for you? 

If you get all of the above points (or have already earned them) by April you will earn a discount to go to the APA convention held in Orlando, Florida this year! APA conferences are amazing opportunities not just to learn more about current activities in the field of psychology and increase networking but you also get a chance to do all the fun touristy stuff in Orlando (ah the beach!)!

What else can you get out of earning points?

Karma points for becoming the "Member of the Semester" (this will be discussed in detail in a later post) and a chance to become part of the next cabinet of ESU Psi Chi. If you think that only graduate students get to become Psi Chi Cabinet members - you are wrong! Our current historian and treasurer are both undergraduates, and any of the positions are open to any active members of Psi Chi.

You also get a chance to earn free honor cords for those who are graduating (during their year of graduation).

What if this is your first semester as a Psi Chi member and you haven't earned any points yet?

No problem! Just so long as you are an active member this semester and earn your points you can still count it towards your APA discount price. You will have plenty of opportunity as we are planning quite an exciting semester of activities.

Launch of the New and Improved Emporia State University Chapter of Psi Chi

Welcome Psi Chi members to the new and improved ESU Psi Chi!

As part of our new strategy to get into the 21st century and become more involved in the community we have decided to go extremely digital! Starting this semester (Spring 2012 in case you live in another dimension of reality), we are going to keep you up to date on all the goodness that is Psi Chi, including pictures, fun articles or quotes that we may come across and any other goodies that are psychologically (or otherwise) related.

We want to start off by introducing each of the cabinet members:

President:



Amanda Martens:



"Hope to see ya'll (look my kansas is coming out) there!"

Amanda Martens, ginger haired with an ever ready laugh, started at ESU in Fall 2011 in a Master's program in Experimental Psychology. She is currently training to be a rat master and will probably populate Visser Hall with rats that are at her beck and call. Ever ready to take on way too much responsibility, she is a permanent fixture in the GTA office (oh, forgot to mention she's a GTA). Amanda is from Iowa.



Vice President:
 
Dinusha Warusavitharana



"my furry coat is purple...i look like a purple berry and i make everyone pet my coat"



 Known affectionately to Amanda as "my little Shri Lankan friend" and to Andrea DuBois as "travel-size" and typically considered a nerd amongst the GTAs, even though her nerdiness gets her cool points in her new Office of International Education GA position, Dinusha started at ESU in Fall 2010. She is in the MS in Clinical Psychology program. She is currently interning at the Mental Health Center. Her recent purchase of a furry purple coat has made her a common receiver of hugs. Dinusha is from Sri Lanka.




Secretary:

Andrea DuBois

 " Sometimes you just need to take a nap."


The craziness that is Andrea cannot be put into words. With profanity at the drop of a hat, an uproarious yet highly infectious laugh, a very big heart, and a propensity to love chocolate, Andrea is possibly the most colorful member in our cabinet! She started at ESU in Spring 2011, is a GTA along with Amanda, and the current Rat master (Yoda) teaching her Luke Skywalker (okay, was that too much?) the tricks of the trade. She is in the MS in Clinical Psychology program. Andrea is from Wichita, KS. 


Fundraising Chair:


Tasia Farley


 "I'm about to try and cram 200 pages of arrogant blow-hard into my head so I can rock a test tomorrow... Scintillating, huh?!"




Tasia is our residential motherly person and the only conscience our organization has! Her sense of humor, friendliness, and strong belief in giving back to the community are the driving forces behind the fundraising part of ESU Psi Chi. Tasia is in the MS in Clinical Psychology program. Tasia is from Wellington, KS.




Treasurer:

Liuhan Cai (aka Sophie for the language-challenged)


"OMG!! i forgot to go to class again!!"



Liuhan, otherwise known as Sophie, personifies ESU Psi Chi's exploitation of the stereotype that Asian's are excellent at math (bear in mind, this is written by an Asian who sucks at it). While her quote may belie her genius, no doubt she will prove the stereotype proud! Liuhan is an undergraduate in the psychology program. Liuhan is from China.




Historian:


Kristi Gildner

"The only reason people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory"

Kristi was the former president of Psychology Club and an ever present and active member of both clubs in her years at ESU. Her extensive knowledge of the mysterious inner workings of ASG and ESU bureaucracy has made her a valuable asset in ESU Psi Chi's search for its soul. Kristi is an undergraduate in the psychology program. Kristi is from Derby, KS. 

 

And last but not least:

Our Otherworldly Advisor

Dr. John Wade

"I was actually going to blame you too. But I'm glad you did it first."


"Would it make you feel better if I drew a smiley face on the board?"


"I don't like being in the gray area." 


Dr. Wade is an associate professor at ESU, who teaches multiple classes including Seminar in Psychopathology, Family and Group Systems, and many others. Given the tremendous task of filling the vacuum left in the psychology department, Dr. Wade has taken it all into stride and so far has not lost his marbles. Considering the current cohort of students he has to deal with, however, it's only a matter of time. Dr. Wade is from Lawrence, KS.