Graduate Student/Post-Doc Committee Column
Erica Baranski1, Ted Schwaba2, and Suri Serrano1
1The University of Houston; 2The University of California, Davis
Greetings ARP Graduate Student and Postdoctoral Members:
We'd first like to introduce our new representatives, Ted Schwaba and Suri Serrano!
Ted: I’m honored to be elected as your graduate student representative! I’m a 6th-year PhD student working with Wiebke Bleidorn at the University of California, Davis. I study personality development across the lifespan, particularly in the context of life events and experiences, as well as openness to experience, the weirdest of the Big Five. As the ARP graduate student representative, my goals are twofold. First, I’m here to listen to my fellow students, who collectively make up half of ARP and form the backbone of academia, amplifying our concerns so that they’re heard and acted on by the executive board. Second, I’ll be a conduit in the reverse direction, disseminating the goings-on of ARP to the graduate students who are often disconnected from this important information. Together, our committee will work to improve the funding and opportunities for ARP graduate students.
Suri: Hi Everyone! I’m excited to work and contribute to the ARP organization in any capacity I can. Currently, I’m a fourth-year PhD student working with Rodica Damian at the University of Houston. My research is focused on how individual differences and social context factors may enable people to overcome life adversities, with the goal of identifying specific protective and risk factors that might affect people’s ability to reach and/or maintain optimal levels of health and well-being. As an ARP student representative, I’m here to advocate on behalf of Early Career Researchers and increase overall communication within the ARP community. Feel free to voice any concerns and suggestions to our committee!
We are already looking forward to next year’s ARP conference in Evanston, IL! As with previous years, we will organize the mentor lunch for the 2021 conference. Last year, we moved to a one-on-one model and received a lot of positive feedback, so we’ll continue using this approach in 2021. Specifically, we will first ask you to indicate whether you want to be a mentor or a mentee and will then ask mentees to report their top three choices from a list of interested mentors. We’ll match mentors and mentees via email and provide a list of local restaurants so each pair can make their own lunch arrangements.
We hope that this one-on-one method will aid early career researchers in making stronger connections with more established researchers. That said, we welcome any and all feedback in our new approach. Please email Erica (ericanbaranski@gmail.com), Ted (tedschwaba@gmail.com) or Suri (suri.serranoa@gmail.com) if you have any questions or concerns.