September Meeting Minutes

• Welcome and introductions

• Review of our policies, procedures, and initiatives developed over the past 8 months

• Identifying the leadership subcommittee

  • Shannon Sauer-Zavala (Faculty), Krystal Cashen (post-doc), and Emily Lapidus and Baylee Jenkins (graduate students) self-nominated and the larger group approved. We are pleased to have stakeholders at all levels represented in leadership. 

• Initiatives

  • Decolonizing Syllabi: The goal is to create a list of recommendations for readings and class activities that highlight work from scholars from diverse backgrounds, as well as make recommendations for the articles students read as part of the alternative assignments (in lieu of research participation)

    • Chair: Steven Arthur

    • Subcommittee members: Doug Terrill, Emily Lapidus, Rachel Farr, Sharla Biefield, Alexis LeGrand

  • Increasing accessibility of resources (+ web edits)

    • Subcommittee Members: Hannah Wild, Jess Flores, Mary Beth McGavran, Madi Diomede, Baylee Jenkins

    • Notes on our web presence - site is a vehicle for communicating our values/disseminating resources to our community at all levels

      • Here’s what we have so far (which admittedly needs some TLC): https://psychology.as.uky.edu/psy-diversity-equity-and-inclusion

    • Side bar: Let’s make sure we have 1-2 departmental representatives to the student congress, which is necessary to access certain university resources. It would be good if at least one of our reps was on the DEI committee.

  • Grad student recruitment: 

    • Subcommittee on increasing the diversity of our applicant pool in the near term: Jessica Burris, Jess Flores, Christopher Penn, Eric Ingram, Cristina Pinheiro, Troy Humbert, Mary Beth McGavran, Christal Badour

      • Ideas from the meeting: make clear that there is money available for travel reimbursement (can we provide departmental recommendations for how funds are handled/allocated?). What about application fees? There are criteria from the grad school? - can we make the application process more transparent on the psychology website (i.e., have to start the waiver process before applying)? If the grad school criteria are too stringent and/or won’t waive fees, can we use department funds to cover this in addition to travel. Can we offer a discounted fee, in addition to the waiver? Can we have grad students listed as contact people on the admissions part of the website to serve as guides through the process?

    • Subcommittee on systemic changes to the psychology pipeline: Krystal Cashen, Christopher Penn, Cristina Pinheiro, Steven Arthur, Eric Ingram, Troy Humbert.

      • Ideas from the meetings: How do we increase the pool way before the application process? Reconsider what is a strong candidate. Is there a better way to evaluate research capacity that is not just research quantity based on opportunities you’ve had access to pre-graduate school. Can we make recommendations to faculty taking RAs to make changes to how they advertise/evaluate applications to work in their lab. How can we make research participation seem more appealing to students earlier on in their undergrad studies. What about outreach to HBCUs or local high schools?

  • Departmental Transparency

    • Did not get to this!

  • APAGS grant

    • Did not get to this! Reaching out Jessica Flores (who put this on the agenda to work on this in the meantime as its deadline dependent).