Monthly Archives: March 2019

CUR student travel awards

The Psychology Division of the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) offers travel awards to students presenting at regional and national conferences. The deadline for the current cycle is April 22, but this is another source for your research assistants to complement department and ORU support. Miami’s institutional membership makes all of our students eligible.

NIH R15 funding prospects

From Jim Oris, OARS:

You may not be aware that NIH recently updated criteria for NIH R15 AREA grants. These grants have always been focused on universities that have a relatively small profile at NIH and have an undergraduate component. The new change gives high priority for research with an undergraduate focus. We predicted that this will allow Miami proposals to be more competitive, and now, based on input from Gary Lorigan (who has served on these panels), it appears that our predictions are correct.

More information can be found here. Both Jim and Gary are willing to consult with faculty interested in pursuing this funding mechanism. I would encourage any of you who are considering options for external funding to take a look at this; the next deadline is June 25.

Diversity & inclusion events next week

Please remember that next week is our very own Diversity & Inclusion Celebration Week, with programming all week and our two workshops on Friday. The associated (public) events are also included below and denoted with **.

Screening of One Day at a Time**
When: Monday, 4/1 @ 3pm
Where: PSY 343
Description: For the first event of the Department’s Diversity and Inclusion Celebration Week, Unidos will present a screening of a TV episode detailing the lives of a modern day Cuban-American family. The episode focuses on what it means to identify as Latinx in the wake of micro-aggressions and hateful comments.

LGBTQ+ Allyship Workshop**
When: Tuesday, 4/2 @ 1-2pm
Where: PSY 134
Description: This is the second event of the Department’s Diversity and Inclusion Celebration Week. Hannah Thompson will host this workshop, where participants will learn the importance of using inclusive language, gain empathy, build cultural respect, and explore ways to create a more inclusive environment.

Coffee with ABPsi**
When: Wednesday, 4/3 @ 9:30-10:30am
Where: PSY 130
Description: In the third event of the Department’s Diversity and Inclusion Celebration Week, members of the Association of Black Psychologists will host a coffee conversation about adversities individuals from diverse backgrounds face on college campuses.

How to Have Difficult Conversations**
When: Wednesday, 4/3 @ 1-2pm
Where: PSY 328
Description: In the fourth event of the Department’s Diversity and Inclusion Celebration Week, Pankhuri Aggarwal and Natalee Price will host a workshop on how, when, and why faculty, staff, and students should have explicit conversations about the impacts privileged and marginalized identities have on power differentials in academia.

César Chávez Day – Transforming America
When: Wednesday, 4/3 @ 5-9pm
Where: 212 MacMillan Hall
Description: The theme of the César Chávez Day Celebration is “Transforming America: Civil disobedience, social change, and environmental justice.” A reception begins at 5:45, followed by film screening of Dolores, who was an equal partner in co-founding the first farm worker union with César Chávez. After the film, a panel discussion will take place, featuring Miami students and professors.

Healthy Masculinities Workshop**
When: Thursday, 4/4 @ 11am-12pm
Where: PSY 134
Description: In the fifth event of the Department’s Diversity and Inclusion Celebration Week, Miami’s Men and Masculinity Committee will host an introduction to masculinity, with a specific focus on the complexities of college-aged men.

Ain’t I a Woman: My Journey to Womanhood
When: Thursday, 4/4 @ 8-11pm
Where: Hall Auditorium (101 S. Campus Ave)
Description: Laverne Cox is the first openly transgender person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in an acting category, and in addition to her career, she is a prominent equal rights advocate. Laverne Cox will share an “empowering message of moving beyond gender expectations to live ore authentically.” This is event is free but ticketed.

Diversity Teach-In**
When: Friday, 4/5 @ 3-5pm
Where: PSY 125
Description: In the final event of the Department’s Diversity and Inclusion Celebration Week, Marie Parsons, Annika Goldman, Alejandro Trujillo, and Sarah Dreyer-Oren will present talks on Modifying Intergroup Anxiety, Ageism and Mental Health, Confronting Racist Incidents on a College Campus: Who Should Respond and Why, and Culture and Help-Seeking: Collecting Cross-Cultural Data at Miami.

Asian Cultural Festival
When: Friday, 4/5 @ 5-7pm
Where: Oxford Uptown Park
Description: The Asian American Association is hosting this event to allow the community and Miami students to learn more about the diverse Asian countries. There will be free food, prizes, and performances.

Seeking faculty to pilot e-textbook platform

From Carolyn Haynes, Associate Provost:

I am writing to you about a new and voluntary textbook initiative that could result in significant cost savings to your students as well as ensure that your students have their texts prior to the beginning of the semester or term.

Miami University recently secured a contract for the Unizin Engage platform. The Unizin Engage e-textbook platform allows students to gain easy access to the text via the faculty member’s Canvas Course site. Because Unizin has a partnership with Canvas, the textbook is integrated into the course site for easy viewing and access by students and faculty from day one of the course.

Students in the course will be sent an email informing them of the course text and how to access it via the Canvas course site. Unless students opt out of using this e-textbook, they will be billed via their Bursar account once the semester or term begins.

Students have the ability to highlight and annotate the text as well as download the full textbook and print out the entire book or portions of it on a copy machine. The faculty member will also be able to annotate the text and use the platform’s analytics feature to identify whether students are reading the text.

As part of the Unizin contract, Miami will join a consortium with other institutions using the platform such as the University of Michigan, Indiana University, Ohio State University and the entire Florida and Nebraska systems. The sheer size of this consortium enables Unizin to negotiate with all of the major textbook publishers to secure significant cost savings (60% on average) for students.

We are seeking faculty on the Oxford campus who would be willing to pilot the Unizin Engage e-textbook platform in the spring 2020 semester. Interested faculty should contact Caroyln directly (haynesca@miamioh.edu).

Meet Clinton Kelly during his visit to Miami

As part of Miami’s Lecture Series, we often get the opportunity for special events with the guest speakers. Those interested in potentially joining a small-group seminar or dinner engagement with Clinton Kelly on April 8 should let me know as soon as possible. From Lana Rosenberg, Chair of the Lecture Series:

Clinton Kelly is best known for co-hosting ABC’s daytime hit The Chew and TLC’s What Not to Wear. As moderator on ABC’s food-centric The Chew, Kelly hosted cooking and style segments. For ten years, he co-hosted What Not to Wear, the longest running primetime series on TLC, where he offered honest style advice with a sense of humor.

Among his books are Freakin’ Fabulous On a Budget and Freakin’ Fabulous: How to Dress, Speak, Behave, Eat, Drink, Entertain, Decorate and Generally Be Better Than Everyone Else. Previously Kelly was a New York based magazine editor and freelance writer; he received a Master’s in Journalism from Northwestern University and a Bachelor’s in Communications from Boston College.

Kelly is a sought-after fashion guru who empowers his audience to revamp their wardrobe and revamp their lives: “Looking good is everyone’s inalienable right. I’m interested in helping real people develop a sense of style that’s understandable for them and appropriate for their lifestyle.” His lecture is titled “Dressing the Body You Have, Not the Body You Want.”

Relay For Life faculty participation request

Grace Tomlinson, President of Colleges Against Cancer at Miami, asks for your (faculty) help for Relay for Life, an American Cancer Society fundraiser:

We are looking for professors to volunteer for a “Pie a Professor” fundraiser from 7pm-9pm on April 5th. These volunteers would come for a portion of that time slot and be pied in the face with a plate of whipped topping in order to raise money for the American Cancer Society. Student’s would pay $3 to pie their professors. We will provide all of the supplies needed for the fundraiser

Anyone interested can reach out to Grace (tomlingk) to sign up or get more information.

John Dovidio speaking at Wittenburg University, March 27

Stephanie Little, Chair of Psychology at Wittenburg University in Springfield, Ohio invites us to two invited lectures by John F. Dovidio, Professor of Psychology and Public Health at Yale University. He will present “Why Can’t We All Get Along? The Challenges of Race Relations in America” onn Wednesday, March 27, 2019, at 7:30 p.m. in Bayley Auditorium (Barbara Deer Kuss Science Center). He will also present a colloquium, “Included But Invisible? The Intergroup Consequences of Colorblindness for Immigrant and Racial Minority Groups,” at 4:00pm (same location). She writes:

Although John F. Dovidio may best be known by the public for his expert commentary on the ABC series, “What Would You Do?” with John Quinones, Dr. Dovidio is widely recognized in the scientific community as a preeminent social psychologist, winning the Donald T. Campbell Award in Social Psychology in 2011 for career contributions to the field and the Kurt Lewin Award in 2004 by the Society for the Study of Social Issues for scholarly accomplishments.

Dr. Dovidio, along with his long-time collaborator, Samuel L. Gaertner, uncovered evidence supporting the notion of “aversive racism,” where well-intentioned Whites who see themselves as egalitarian and fair-minded toward African Americans may nevertheless harbor unconscious negative thoughts and feelings that can often result in discriminatory behavior. Because such discriminatory behavior is antithetical to their conscious beliefs, they tend to rationalize and deny that their negative behavior toward African Americans is racist. Such subtle forms of racism have recently become popularized and introduced into the public forum as implicit, as opposed to explicit, racism.

Dr. Dovidio not only identifies and illustrates modern forms of prejudice and their consequences through empirical investigations, he also demonstrates mechanisms for ameliorating their negative effects. For example, using their “Common Ingroup Identity Model” of intergroup relations, Dr. Dovidio and his colleagues have facilitated processes which can enhance trust and adherence to medical advice among White physicians and Black cancer patients. These procedures may ultimately be applicable to a wide range of problems confronting our multicultural society.

Join the Diversity Interest Group

From Akanksha Das, who is organizing a new group with JJ Togans:

Based on feedback and interest we are going to be starting a “Diversity Interest Group” to facilitate conversations around diversity science, fostering an inclusive environment in our department, and/or anything else pertaining to diversity in the field of psychology.

If interested in joining, please take a look at the survey below to indicate your availability for an hour meeting on a biweekly basis. Please fill this out before Spring Break so we can identify a time for our first meeting for when we return!

http://whenisgood.net/diversityinterestgroup

Diversity & inclusion events next week

Racial Legacies and Learning
When: Monday, 3/18 @ 6-9pm
Where: Hamilton Campus, Harry T. Wilks Conference Center
Description: Dr. Karla Scott, from Saint Louis University, will present a talk related to her research on and advocacy for “giving voice to the lived experiences of Black women.”

Women’s Journeys, Women’s Voices: The Refugee Experience in America
When: Tuesday, 3/19 @ 10-11am
Where: Middletown Campus, Johnston Hall 142
Description: “Come and listen to the experiences of local women who started their journey in the United States as refugees. Following the presentations, a light lunch will be served for guests and participants.”

Holocaust and Genocide Education Council Tabling
When: Tuesday, 3/19 @ 10am-3pm
Where: the Outdoor Seal
Description: Students for Israel at Miami and Hillel: Association of Jewish Students will host this tabling event, where attendees can stop by the table and learn what the Holocaust and Genocide Education Council is doing this year.

Women’s History: Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
When: Wednesday, 3/20 @ 12-1pm
Where: Middletown Campus, Gardner-Harvey Library Room 124
Description: “An autobiographical account of how the author, a botanist, found a sanctuary in science, and the disappointments, triumphs, and exhilarating discoveries of scientific work.”

Hamentashen Pass Out
When: Wednesday, 3/20 @ 12-3pm
Where: Armstrong
Description: Hillel: Association of Jewish Students will be passing out Hamentashens and teaching about the Jewish holiday, Purim.

Carmen Miranda: Bananas is my Business
When: Wednesday, 3/20 @ 5:30-7:30pm
Where: Middletown Campus, Johnston Hall 111
Description: This event will feature an “award-winning documentary about the life of 1940s film star and inspiration for the Chiquita Banana logo.”

Tools for Respect, Dialogues, and Diversity (part 1 of 2)
When: Thursday, 3/21 @ 2:30-4:30pm
Where: 320 Laws Hall
Description: “This two workshop series…will build skills in facilitating respectful and productive dialogues across diverse people and diverse topics.” Note that this workshop will feature members of our Department, including Jen Green, Kathryn Smith, and Deborah Wiese. Also note that registration is limited to the first 20 registrants. Register here.