October 2004

Dear Psi Chi Chapter Officers, Members, and Faculty Advisors,

Welcome back for the 2004-2005 academic year!

The Southwest Region of Psi Chi under the leadership of John Davis had an exciting year. Last April, Psi Chi made its normal high-caliber contributions at the Southwestern Psychological Association (SWPA) Convention in San Antonio, Texas. Many Psi Chi faculty advisors and chapters brought groups of students. The Psi Chi program included undergraduate research paper and poster sessions in which 12 Psi Chi students won $3,600 of Psi Chi Regional Research Awards. Other highlights of the program were a variety of distinguished Psi Chi invited speakers, including Jesse Purdy (former Psi Chi Southwestern Regional Vice-President, Psi Chi National President, and SWPA President) and Robert Sternberg (former APA president). We also enjoyed the active participation of Psi Chi's new Chief Executive Officer Virginia Andreoli Mathie, current Psi Chi President Christopher Koch, and Past President Elizabeth Yost Hammer. I hope that you can join us this year for academic and social activities at SWPA, similar to this past year's programs.

Psi Chi at SWPA, Memphis: Psi Chi's 76th Anniversary and SWPA's 51st
We are planning a wide range of Psi Chi events for the SWPA meeting in Memphis, Tennessee, March 24-26, 2005. Plan to bring a large group of students from your campus. I will be offering suggestions in a future letter, for instance, on how to organize clusters of chapters to rent a bus to get to Memphis which is right at the edge of our Psi Chi region. The Psi Chi paper and poster sessions, nationally prominent speakers (to be announced), and social events of the SWPA convention are currently being planned. SWPA will meet in the Peabody Hotel under the watchful eyes of the internationally famous Peabody Ducks and their twice-daily demonstration of the power of conditioning--a must see for students of psychology.

Psi Chi's First Regional Listserv is Now Active
This listserv will be available for chapter officers, Psi Chi members, and chapter advisors in the Southwestern Region (Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas) to exchange information with one another. I hope the listserv will shortly become one of the primary vehicles of communication within our region. I will be emailing information and instructions about how to sign on to the listserv shortly. Stay tuned!

Psi Chi Undergraduate Research Competition at 2005 SWPA
SWPA provides a remarkable opportunity to present your research. Begin now to prepare your research for presentation during the Psi Chi program at the 51st SWPA meeting in Memphis. All Psi Chi submissions are automatically considered for the Psi Chi competition, as long as you follow the guidelines below. It is important that you pay particular attention to Items 6 and 10 below. To submit to the Psi Chi Undergraduate Research Competition, you will need to do the following.
 
1. Apply for SWPA student membership if you are not a member already. Do this as soon as possible. You can obtain membership information and application forms at www.swpsych.org. All authors of papers presented at SWPA must be members of SWPA, but only the lead author of papers submitted for the Psi Chi sessions needs to be a member of SWPA when the paper or poster is submitted. Other coauthors can apply before the convention and pay their first-year dues at the convention next March, but please apply today! Regular student dues are $25, which includes the conference registration. If you wait to pay your dues at the convention, you must pay a $10 late fee. Moreover, if dues are paid after December 31, you will not receive a program by mail - you will need to pick it up at the convention.

2. Submit your paper or poster proposal to SWPA electronically no later than midnight on Monday, November 15, 2004. That date is an extended deadline, courtesy of SWPA--only for Psi Chi poster and paper proposals; for SWPA competition, the deadline is November 8, 2004, as noted later. Submitting your proposal is achieved through the following steps:

A. Go to www.swpsych.org to reach the home page of SWPA. For non-members, there are several pages of information including how to become a member, submission instructions, and an access point to apply for membership.

B. Student members of SWPA submitting papers for the Psi Chi competition enter through the "Login" button with their login word and password. That is, the student submitting a paper for the Psi Chi paper/poster sessions must already be a member of SWPA--but it is easy to join!

C. After you have logged in, look in the left-hand frame column under the text "Presentations for the 51st Annual Convention in 2005" and click on the "Submit or Edit" link.

D. On the "Submit or Edit a Presentation - 2005" page, select "Submit a presentation."

E. Once on the Add/Submit a New Presentation page, enter the following:

1. Organization for which this presentation is being submitted: Your only choice will be SWPA.
   
   
2. You need a Presentation Title (10 words or less in APA style).
   
   
3. You should select your Presentation Format: If you want a poster, select "Poster only." If you want to give a talk, select "Talk only." If you would like to give a poster or a talk and want to let the program chair decide where it best fits, select "Poster or Talk." See the note below if you are interested in submitting to the SWPA research competition category rather than the Psi Chi category and competition. Whether submitting a poster or a paper, you will identify yourself as a member of Psi Chi later on this submission form, which will target your paper or poster to Psi Chi for review.
   
   
4. Type of Research Competition: You will not select anything for this box unless you submit for the SWPA research competition.
   
   
5. Select the two most broadly descriptive topic areas that apply to your proposed presentation. The "Printable Listing" window suggests several dozen possibilities for you - pick the two best choices.
   
   
6. List each member of your paper/poster, remembering that to be eligible for the Psi Chi Competition, only Psi Chi students who are going to become members of SWPA can be listed. No faculty names should appear in this list.
   
   
7. Designate one member of the author team as the presenter, who must already be a student member of SWPA. Generally, this should be the first author.
   
   
8. Supply the required information for the presenter.
   
   
9. Identify your faculty sponsor for your submission.
   
   
10. Presentation Summary. This is where you should sell us on your poster. You have 500 words in which to do so. Follow the form for specific instructions if you are submitting a paper. This summary should be a complete description of your project giving the reviewer (and potential audience!) as full an understanding as you can convey in 500 words about your project. This is the ONLY information which will be used in making initial decisions about accepting your poster or paper for presentation and for deciding which projects will be given one of the (up to) 12 Psi Chi Awards. Note carefully: This program will not spell-check your submission. Write your submission on your own word processing program and then copy it onto the SWPA Submission Form. Please note: To be eligible for the "Psi Chi Competition" among student members, this writing should be entirely student-produced, not coauthored with a faculty member.
    
    Every summary must consist of these four clearly delineated sections: Problem, Method, Results, and Conclusions. Every summary should specify the importance of the problem to the current literature, the procedure used to collect data, the findings of the research, the relevance of the findings to the original problem, and the implications of the research. Obtained data and results must be described in the submission. Do not submit posters with unanalyzed data. Authors violating any of these criteria risk outright rejection. However, it is perfectly all right to continue your research, and collect and report additional data after your initial submission.
    
    
11. Following the summary, you can indicate preferred media equipment, but only overhead projectors will be supplied for sure. You should plan to supply your own computer and/or computer projector. Easels will be available if you have a poster presentation.
    
    
12. Note carefully: Below the next block of information you should check the block at the left of the screen to indicate that you are a member of Psi Chi and that you want your submission to be forwarded to the Psi Chi Program chair. Otherwise, your submission will be forwarded to the SWPA program chair and not be part of the Psi Chi program or competition. Be sure to check this button on the left of the electronic form.
    
    
13. Critically Important: At this point you should copy this complete submission file onto another file on your computer before submitting it to SWPA.
    
    
14. Click the "SUBMIT THE ABOVE INFORMATION" button so as to forward your submission to SWPA. Notice that you can review and revise your submission until the deadline date.

F. Finally, because this is the first year Psi Chi is utilizing SWPA's submission system, please forward a backup email copy of your SWPA submission directly to me at Kasschau@uh.edu. In the Subject line, put "SWPA Psi Chi" and, in addition to the information submitted to SWPA, please add the following information to what you email to me:

* Presentation format: ___Paper (talk), ___Poster, ___No preference
* Name, phone number, and e-mail address of Psi Chi faculty advisor or other faculty member sponsoring your proposal

Note: Your proposal will be reviewed for acceptance by at least two reviewers from universities in our region. In order to notify award winners prior to their presentations, we will select student research award winners entirely based on the written proposal. It is important to realize that as you advance in your education, many decisions will be made about you solely based on your written work. So use this opportunity to make your written submission exemplary! Psi Chi will make up to 12 Regional Research Awards of $300 for student presentations. In addition to these awards, the Psi Chi National Council has authorized the awarding of a limited number of additional awards if our regional association's submission numbers increase more than other regions. Do submit; we can potentially award additional money! I hope one of this year's awards will be yours.

Presentation details.
All talks with papers are for 15 minutes with an additional 5-minute question-and-answer period. Poster size is 30 x 40 inches. As a courtesy to people who attend paper sessions, poster sessions, and symposia, presenters should have at least 40 copies of handouts or formal papers available for distribution.

The SWPA Research Competition
You may want to consider entering your research project in the SWPA research competition. If so, you will be required to submit a 1500-2000 word summary rather than the 500-word abstract. In addition, SWPA research competition submissions are due no later than November 8, 2004. SWPA reviews the research competition submissions and chooses the top five as semi-finalists to present papers in the competition. The awards in this competition are judged based on the submitted summary, as well as the presentation itself. If you wish to submit for this prestigious award, then on the submission page, choose "Research Competition" rather than "Talk only, Poster only or Poster or Talk." Then choose the appropriate category for the SWPA competition: undergraduate or graduate. If you submit to this competition, but are not chosen as a semi-finalist, you will be placed in the Psi Chi program and research competition only if you check the Psi Chi box at the bottom-left of the submission page. More information about the SWPA research competition can be found on the SWPA web site.

Again, welcome back! As a student of psychology in the Southwestern Region, you are regarded as valued members of the psychological community. In the coming year, make certain you are a part of the excitement. Please take full advantage of the opportunities that your department and Psi Chi have to offer you. Moreover, remember: It is never too soon to start planning research that will lead to a submission for the 2006 SWPA Convention! I look forward to meeting you in Memphis.

Sincerely,

Richard A. Kasschau, Ph.D.
Psi Chi Southwestern Region Vice-President