About

SWPA, the Southwestern Psychological Association, is the official APA affiliate for the Southwestern region of the United States.

States in the APA Southwest Region

Mission

SWPA works to promote and strengthen psychology’s scientific, professional, and educational facets. At its annual meeting, SWPA offers paper, poster, continuing education sessions, workshops, symposia, and invited talks. SWPA prides itself on serving the psychological community by providing access to scientific advances and professional development within a collegial atmosphere. Students are welcomed and treated as active and valued participants in the discipline.

SWPA strives to maintain diversity in its membership, its leadership, and its program. A mark of the program’s diversity is the number of special interest groups that choose to meet with SWPA. These organizations include the Psi Chi, the Society for Applied Multivariate Research (SAMR), the Southwestern Comparative and Behavioral Neuroscience Association (SCBNA), and the Southwest Teaching of Psychology Organization (SWToP). Members of TOPPS (Teaching Psychology in Schools) and PT@CC (Psychology Teaching at Community Colleges) also meet with SWPA.

History

In July 1953, a group of Texas psychologists felt the time had come for a new regional association of psychologists and mailed a letter stating their interest to all American Psychological Association members living in New Mexico, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas. This effort culminated the following December in San Antonio as the Southwestern Psychological Association met for the first time. Although Arizona and New Mexico now join the original states to form the Association’s core, SWPA’s membership continues to reach across international boundaries and includes members in states from Washington to Florida and California to Connecticut. From its founding to the present, SWPA works to promote and strengthen psychology’s scientific, professional, and educational facets. SWPA celebrated its Fiftieth Anniversary meeting in April of 2004 in San Antonio at the Sheraton Gunter Hotel, site of its original meeting.