Dr. Jeffrey N. Rouder
Professor and Falmagne Endowed Chair - University of California, Irvine

Keynote Address

Jeff Rouder received degrees in physics, cultural anthropology and in mathematical behavioral sciences (an interdisciplinary program across the social sciences) on his way to becoming a cognitive psychologist.  Dr. Rouder has found a calling at the interface of science and statistics.  He endeavors to understand how evidence may be stated for psychological law and regularities.  Dr. Rouder has published over 120 articles and is best known for his work with hierarchical models, evidence-accumulation models, individual differences, and Bayes factor.  He currently holds the Falmagne Chair in Mathematical Psychology at The University of California, Irvine and is a Mercator Fellow of the "Statistics and Mathematics in Psychology" program in Germany.

Dr. David J. Purpura
Purdue University - Department of Human Development and Family Studies

Keynote Address

David Purpura is a Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Purdue University and he is the Director of the Center for Early Learning--a research, practice, and policy center focused on improving educational opportunities for children birth to 8 years old. His research is focused on integrating developmental, cognitive, and educational psychology to better understand how young children learn math and how best to provide instruction that fits naturally into existing school and home activities.

Dr. Martha W. Alibali
University of Wisconsin-Madison - Department of Psychology

Keynote Address

Martha W. Alibali is Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Psychology and Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and she is a principal investigator at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research. She conducts research at the interface of developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, and mathematics education. Her primary line of research investigates mathematical learning and development, with a special focus on the roles of gesture and action in mathematical cognition. She is a past recipient of the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Prize from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She has served as the Chair of the Mathematical Cognition and Learning Society and as a panel member for the National Academies of Science, Engineering & Medicine.

Dr. Denise E. Maricle, Ph.D., LP-MN, NCSP, ABSNP
Texas Woman's University

Keynote Address

Dr. Denise Maricle is a professor in the School of Social Work, Psychology, and Philosophy at Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas. She serves as an affiliate faculty member within the School Psychology Programs and the Woodcock Institute for the Advancement of Neurocognitive Research and Applied Practice. Dr. Maricle is the inaugural 2022-2023 recipient of the Richard R. Woodcock Distinguished Senior Research Fellowship awarded by the Woodcock Institute for the Advancement of Neurocognitive Research and Applied Practice. Dr. Maricle is a Nationally Certified School Psychologist (NCSP), a Licensed Psychologist (MN), and holds the Diplomate in School Neuropsychology from the American Board School Neuropsychology. Over the past 30+ years Dr. Maricle has practiced as a psychologist at both the non-doctoral and doctoral levels as a counseling psychologist, school psychologist, a pediatric/school neuropsychologist, and as an academician and researcher. Her teaching and research include the areas of cognitive, neuropsychological, and academic assessment, child neurodevelopment, neurodevelopmental and genetic disorders, and neuropsychopharmacology. She has authored, co-authored, and co-edited numerous books, journals, articles, and chapters, such as Evidence-Based Selective Assessment Academic Disorders (2017), Essentials of School Neuropsychological Assessment, Third Edition (2019) and Best Practices in School Neuropsychology: Guidelines for Effective Practice, Assessment, and Evidenced-Based Intervention, 2nd Edition (2022).

Dr. Janelle McDaniel
University of Loisiana Monroe - Department of Psychology

SWToP Keynote Address

Short Biography

Janelle McDaniel is an experimental psychologist and Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Louisiana Monroe. She currently serves as Faculty Senate President and is a founding team member of the Women take FLIGHT program which provides leadership training and mentorship to women on campus. She is a principal investigator in the Behavior and Motivation Laboratory and her current research focuses on college student motivation and student success. Her favorite classes to teach are Learning and Motivation and Adolescent Neuroscience.

Talk

Changing Demographics in Higher Education and the Mentor Relationship

University faculty and administrators are currently planning for predicted changes in student and faculty demographics and a dreaded “enrollment cliff”. Many of the dire warnings for higher education focus on the shrinking number of traditional students available for recruiting in many parts of the country. The focus on enrollment numbers alone fails to capture other important trends, including increased focus on non-traditional students, socioeconomic diversity on campus, changing admission standards, and the increased mental health needs of students. With these changes, mentorship becomes an increasingly important tool for helping students build the non-cognitive factors that will support their student success. As more students need support, faculty members may see more demands on their time to provide mentorship, especially in fields like psychology. This talk will focus on changes and challenges occurring in mentor relationships on campus, and how mentorship demands might look different for psychology faculty.

Dr. Adrienne R. Carter-Sowell
Center for Applied Social Research

Psi Chi Keynote Speaker Address

Short Biography

Adrienne R. Carter-Sowell, Ph.D. is a Professor of Psychology, a faculty member in the Center for Applied Social Research (CASR), and an inaugural First Year Experience Program Director at the University of Oklahoma. As Director, she develops, implements, and oversees a required core course for the General Education curriculum. Dr. Carter-Sowell offers more than 15 years of acquired study, training, and practice to concurrent academic and professional leadership positions. Her research focuses on asset-based mentoring and professional development, especially for minoritized faculty, post-doctoral researchers, graduate and undergraduate students. She has studied the impacts of “being invisible” and how to ameliorate these negative experiences by cultivating a sense of belonging at all higher education stages of the academic pipeline. Dr. Carter-Sowell’s most recent program of work involves outcomes of chronic ostracism experiences, COVID-19 and today’s workplace, and differential impacts of campus safety. In 2022, Dr. Carter-Sowell became a Faculty Research Fellow, the recipient of the Innovative Teaching Award from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) and Co-PI on two, active awards from the NSF AGEP (Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate) directorate. Previously, she served as the Associate Head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and jointly appointed, tenured faculty member in Africana Studies and Psychology at Texas A&M University in College Station, TX. Dr. Carter-Sowell is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA). She received the 2021 Jenessa Shapiro Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) – APA Division 8 for Faculty Contributions to Diversity and Inclusion. The award recognizes a faculty member who has had a direct and significant impact on the representation and experiences of underrepresented individuals in social/personality psychology and/or the broader community. The honor is bestowed in memory of UCLA Professor Jenessa Shapiro. Dr. Carter-Sowell attended her first SWPA Convention in 2011 in San Antonio, TX and she is honored to be selected by The Southwestern Psi Chi Steering Committee as Diversity Speaker at this year’s meeting of the Southwestern Psychological Association.

Talk

Picking Your Path Not Sides: The Psychology of Culture, Conflict, and Acceptance in Higher Education

College campuses represent diverse communities, social networks, and a recognizable brand for those who belong and those who want to belong. Simple routines of academic life establish and maintain enduring relationships in environments that can be stressful, competitive, and hostile. Interpersonal and institutional dynamics produce intentional and unintentional circumstances for the reoccurring exclusion of members from prototypically disenfranchised groups. Staying vigilant to the current programs and historical influences that sustain community well-being in higher education is compulsory. The National Science Foundation (NSF, 2008) has sponsored efforts to build campus community well-being and expand diversity in the professoriate by means of the Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) program. By design, the strategic collaborations and interconnected campus communities created by NSF AGEP alliances are intended to be models for implementation by other accredited institutions in the United States. This talk will highlight an interdisciplinary, longitudinal, mixed methods research project that was conducted with students, scholars, and staff at colleges and universities wide-ranging across the Carnegie Classification Tiers. Key findings are addressed from a newly developed Thematic Taxonomy of AGEP project activities carried out by the NSF allied cohorts. Evidence based interventions and fundamental theories of learning foster updated insights on perceived access to “hidden curricula,” mismatched priorities of what you know vs. who you know, and disparities in “fit” and acceptance in academic careers.

Dr. Marlone D. Henderson
University of Texas at Austin - Department of Psychology

Psi Chi Distinguished Speaker Address

Short Biography

Marlone D. Henderson received his Ph.D in social psychology from New York University in 2006 after which he was an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago until 2008. He is currently an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. Henderson’s research focuses on social cognition and motivation, and draws on a combination of field and laboratory research methods. Dr. Henderson has expertise in methods that are centered on manipulating/measuring people’s level of construal in important domains. Specifically, Dr. Henderson explores how situational factors that can shift people’s thinking or construal to a more abstract, broader level can have important consequences in the domain of conflict resolution, social judgments, and prosocial behavior. One consistent theme of Dr. Henderson’s research is the importance of people’s ability to expand their mental horizons so that they can think beyond their immediate, concrete experiences when making judgments and regulating their behavior. Dr. Henderson has been successful at attracting external funding for his research (e.g., from the National Science Foundation).

Talk

The Interplay between Causal Uncertainty and Seeing the Big Picture

When negative events occur (e.g., a breakup, a mass shooting, a celebrity death), people naturally ask themselves why such things happen. Recent research has shown that thinking about negative events in a more general or big-picture type of manner fosters less uncertainty about why those events happened. In this presentation, I will demonstrate a downstream consequence of this effect, namely that causal uncertainty activates a goal to avoid thinking about details and instead pushes people to think at a bigger, more general level. Drawing on principles of motivation and goal-pursuit, our findings show that when people feel more uncertain about event (e.g., why did my partner dump me?), they 1) react more positively to more general (vs. more detail-oriented) messages about those events and 2) are more likely to resume an activity that affords an opportunity to think in more general (vs. more specific) manner about that event. In further support of our motivational framework, we also show that after leading participants to feel more uncertain about a negative event, they no longer exhibited a more positive attitude toward an activity that afforded an opportunity to think more generally once they had the opportunity to actually engage in more general thinking. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings will be discussed.