Section on Positive Psychology – January 2016

Greetings from the Section on Positive Psychology!

The Section has been busy! Here is a summary of some of our activities…

Student Leadership Opportunities

Are you a student, interested in Positive Psychology, and looking for a leadership opportunity? Submit your materials (see below) to become a Student Campus Representative! This position was designed for students to coordinate positive psychology involvement at their respective university by recruiting and educating others about the field of positive psychology.

Specifically, Student Campus Representatives can get involved by:

1) Assisting with recruitment of students at their university (and potentially other local universities) for our section.

2) Giving a short (already established) presentation about the Positive Psychology Section to their department or university’s Counseling Psychology (or Psychology) Student Organization(s).

3) Communicating quarterly with the Positive Psychology Section’s Student Representative.

4) Creating a short PowerPoint presentation (10-15 minutes) on a positive psychology oriented topic that includes presenting notes (so other Campus Representatives can use the presentation at their respective university).

5) Helping collect positive psychology resources for our members to use. 

If you are interested in applying, please send an email to our Section’s Student Representative, Adam Fishel ([email protected]) with your CV and a brief statement about yourself and your interest in positive psychology. If you’d like to nominate someone else, please send his or her contact information to Adam as well.

Section Awards and Featured Members

Are you an awesome student or professional, doing awesome work in the area of Positive Psychology? The section highly encourages you to either self-nominate (don’t be shy!) or to nominate another individual by sending an email to Rhea Owens ([email protected]) providing the nominee’s contact information. If you choose to nominate yourself or someone else, please do so by March 15th. If you nominate someone else, the Awards Committee will contact the nominee to let her/him know and to encourage her/him to submit application materials. The deadline for submitting application materials is April 30th. Please see our website (http://www.div17pospsych.com/annual-awards/) and look out for an email on the Positive Psychology and Division 17 Listservs for more information about the awards.

The winner of this year’s Student Award for Distinguished Contributions to Positive Psychology was Adam Fishel, and the winner of the Shane J. Lopez Award for Professional Contributions in Positive Psychology was Rhea Owens. 

This past year, the Section has begun to highlight some of its top-notch students and full members. Students highlighted include: Beatriz Bello (University of California, Santa Barbara), Shu-Yi Wang (Indiana University Bloomington), Dominika Borowa (Texas Tech University), and Blake Allan (student at the University of Florida, now faculty member at Purdue University). Full members highlighted include: Christine Robitschek (Texas Tech University), Jennifer Teramoto Pedrotti (Cal Poly State University), Jeana Magyar-Moe (University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point), and Michael Scheel (University of Nebraska-Lincoln).

Section Scholarship

Section leaders recently completed editing a two-part special issue on Applications of Positive Psychology in The Counseling Psychologist, which included amazing articles by a number of our section’s members. The first issue from May 2015 included: an introductory article including a survey on the use of positive psychology and a follow-up content analysis of positive psychology’s representation in Counseling Psychology journals, an extensive review of foundational positive psychology theories and constructs (available for continuing education credits!), a paper on purpose and meaning in career development, and a paper on a hope group intervention for individuals with chronic pain. The second issue included papers on: a comprehensive model of positive psychological assessment, positive family therapy, the implementation of capitalization, and integrating positive psychology into training. 

Not a member of the Positive Psychology Section yet?!

No problem! Membership is free! Join by going to: http://www.div17pospsych.squarespace.com/join-the-section/