Note from Dr. Susan Collins (Div 50 Membership Chair) about APA 2020

Apologies for the delayed post! Due to [my own] technical difficulties, this post I originally sent 9/23 did not make it to listserv:

I am excited to be working with APA President, Dr. Linda Sobell, as your APA 2020 Convention Program Chair with Dr. Megan Kirouac joining me this year as Cochair.

First off, thank you to everyone who participated in the 2019 APA Convention. A special thanks goes to 2019 Pres, Dr. Jen Buckman, and 2019 Program Chair, Dr. Seema Clifasefi, for putting together such an exciting and thought-provoking program. They’re big shoes to fill, but fortunately they are staying on as Past Pres and Diversity Committee Chair, respectively, and will continue to work closely with us to share what they learned and help us shape programming this year.

On that note, I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s already time to begin thinking about the 2020 APA Convention in Washington, DC! We hope that you can set aside time to join us in DC from Aug 6-9. Our goal is to put together a strong program that highlights Dr. Sobell’s selected theme, “50 Years of Harm Reduction: Past, Present and Future.” We are also excited to receive submissions from folks who are doing cutting edge work on various topics across the field, including those emphasizing priorities of 2020’s President and Past President (emphasizing contributions of students and early career folks, diversity and inclusion, collaboration across divisions, and “Deep Poverty”).

The first deadline for submissions is Friday October 11th 2019 for collaborative symposium. For those of you unfamiliar with collaborative symposium process, these sessions encourage the many divisions of APA to work together on “hot topics” that are highly collaborative and interactive sessions for a wide target audience. These sessions are both prestigious and advantageous for our division as they do not count against the total time we have to schedule events at convention.

This year’s Div 28 program chair, Dr. Justin Stickland, provided me with an example of a successful submission from last year to help guide sessions you may be considering putting together. (Please see attached.)

As your Div 50 Membership Chair, I also want to encourage new members to attend and participate in convention programming. To this end, I have also started a Division 50 convention session planning sheet as a google doc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aHKGfbC5xrcT_rpyu7uMtgvIVE6VnJhQNi6YkMYB_JQ/edit#gid=0. This sheet should act as a way to facilitate communication for those of you with symposium ideas or interests, but unsure who or where to turn to next. You can find out there who to contact about mutual interests in setting up symposia. Should anyone be interested in learning more about the submission process, feel free to contact me (susan.collins@wsu.edu). I will also reach out to individuals that express interest on overlapping topics in the hope of acting as a guide in the APA submission process and in linking up similar-minded folks.

After the collaborative proposal deadline in Oct, the regular symposium or poster abstract submission deadline is December 2nd. More information on that will be forthcoming.

Looking forward to hearing from you in the time leading up to APA 2020 :-)

Best,

Susan