Students
Student Task Force
Email the task force: apadivision34student@googlegroups.com
Division 34 has recently appointed Jake Benfield, Nora Davis, Kelsey Lyle, Shawn Sweeney and Will Szlemko to a task force to increase student involvement in the division. As a group we have set a couple of goals, 1) increase involvement of current student members, and 2) grow the division through recruitment of new student members. As others have noted (e.g. Sommer, 2000; Stokols, 1995) environmental psychology is largely an applied field and as such our identity is diffused across many disciplines. Currently about 8% of division members are students, and 36% are in academic faculty positions, some of whom are no longer accepting new students. This effectively creates a limited and ever shrinking recruitment pool.
Our initial efforts centered on learning how students find out about professional organizations, reasons for joining or not joining an organization, and student expectations of organizations. We surveyed 46 students from a variety of fields - biology, human development, several sub-fields of psychology, and business management. Graduate students surveyed belong to an average of 2.7 professional organizations (range 0-10), and often learn about an organization from advisors, other students or by invitation. Additionally, most students join for purposes of building their vita, staying current with the field, and receiving discounts on journals and conferences.
Based on the shrinking of an already limited recruitment pool, we are actively calling for help from the division at large. Both academics and non-academics will benefit from greater student involvement and subsequent growth in the areas of population and environmental psychology. If you have questions, comments or ideas related to our goals feel free to contact one of the task force members.
— by Jacob A. Benfield & William J. Szlemko, Colorado State University
Student Task Force Members
Jacob A. Benfield, co-chair
Colorado State University, jbenf23(at)lamar.colostate.edu
William J. Szlemko, co-chair
Colorado State University, shoshin(at)lamar.colostate.edu
Nora Davis, secretary
University of Surrey, noraconstatine(at)yahoo.com
Nora Davis graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Maryland with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and English in 2005. During her junior year at Trinity College Dublin, she was introduced to Environmental Psychology by an inspirational teacher. Professionally, she has worked with patients at Friend's Psychiatric Hospital in Philadelphia; assisted in zoning and construction permit reviews with the Environmental Planning Department of the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission of Montgomery County, Maryland; and mentored foster youth and other students through community service in the City of Alexandria, Virginia, where she also assisted with the City's "Going Green" effort to obtain LEED Certification. Currently, she is working towards a Masters of Science in Environmental Psychology at the University of Surrey, Guildford, England where she is considering research comparing the restorative impacts of natural versus technological stimuli on a patient's post-surgical experiences.
Kelsey Lyle
Washington State University, klyle(at)wsu.edu
Kelsey Lyle is pursuing a Masters in Human Development at Washington State University. Her thesis is on how parental cognitions influence advice giving and social coaching. Her research interests in Environmental Psychology are how parents give their children advice or coach their children about environmental attitudes. As an undergraduate, Kelsey attended Linfield College in McMinnville, OR, and majored in Psychology and minored in Philosophy. She spent five years of her youth in Sumatra, Indonesia (dad is a geologist for Chevron), which she believes influenced her need to preserve the natural world.
Shawn Sweeney
Jane Goodall Institute, sjsweeney(at)gmail.com
Shawn Sweeney is currently the Graduate Fellow with the Jane Goodall Institute's youth program Roots & Shoots. He works out of the office at Western Connecticut State University. Primarily, he works with our the College and University network, as well as the Youth Leadership Program. Shawn graduated from the College of Wooster about a year and a half ago, where he studied Conservation Psychology with Dr. Susan Clayton.