by Eric Landrum

2014 STP President

I am truly honored and humbled to serve this year as the President of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP) / Division Two of the American Psychological Association.  I joined STP in 1989 as I received my PhD in cognitive psychology, and for the past 25 years, I’ve enjoyed the benefits of  membership.  The most important benefit, however, are the lifelong friends I have made as being part of an active and vibrant community that cares about a quality psychology education at all levels.

So you think you know about an organization after being a member for almost half of your life (yes, I turned 51 earlier this week), but I didn’t really start to understand the depth and complexity of STP until I became its Secretary in 2009.  In that capacity, I was in a room with very smart and very active people who care about psychology education as much or more than I do. It is both invigorating and intimidating.  Can I keep up?  Fortunately, I don’t have to worry about that, because when you are part of a meaningful community, we all pitch in. 

During my presidential year, my litmus test question is this – how can we better serve our members?  I’m happy to report that our Executive Committee (EC) does not move like a glacier, and I’ve been so pleased with our collaborative spirit and prompt response times.  Although January is about to come to a close, earlier this month we had an STP member inquire about moving our Master Teacher Competencies document from the Members-Only section of our website to a public viewundefinedshe believed that this document could have a widespread impact to all psychology teachers.  Our EC conferred and concurred with our member’s suggestion, and by the end of the same day the document was made public (go Homepage – Resources – Teaching Competencies).  Late last year another member inquired about resources for graduate-level educators; we certainly have many resources that would assist in this area, but they are not organized in this fashion.  So we’ll be looking at how we can add organizational features to our website so that “quick hits” on a particular topic are easy to find and time-savers for teachers of psychology.

My goal is to write a presidential blog at least once a month, and in future posts I’ll highlight particular resources, grant opportunities, diversity initiatives, awards, programming, member benefits, and so on – it is an impressive organization from all perspectives.  Here’s the current roster of EC members –

Thank YOU for all that you do for our psychology students everywhere, everyday –

Eric

elandru@boisestate.edu

@ericlandrum