2015 Association for Women in Psychology Conference

Resources exist for women interested in moving into administrative leadership positions (e.g., HERS program). However, there is little guidance for those interested in leadership opportunities within the faculty (e.g., department chair, faculty committee chair). Knowing that service is often evaluated in promotion and tenure decisions with less emphasis than teaching and scholarship, junior faculty often wait until after they are tenured to become significantly involved in faculty governance. However, this impedes them from having a track record necessary to be perceived as faculty leaders amongst their colleagues and by the administration (Chrisler, Herr, & Murstein, 1998). For women, there are still additional hurdles for entering leadership positions, because institutions which reproduce inequality within their governance structure are resistant to change (Dean, Bracken, & Allen, 2009). Although women are able to move into leadership roles (e.g., department chairs) in traditionally male-dominated professions, they are still expected to exhibit both masculine/agentic and feminine/communal behaviors in order to be successful (Isaac, Griffin, & Carnes, 2010). Formal faculty influence in institutional governance is steadily decreasing (O’Meara, LaPointe Terosky, & Neumann, 2008), yet faculty involvement directly affects the strength and influence of their participation in critical institutional decisions. This structured discussion will be facilitated by women who serve (or have served) in such roles in recent years. We will discuss strategies for becoming an effective faculty leader (e.g., networking, cultivating a reputation as an independent thinker, understanding the culture and political climate of the institution, as well as the issues affecting higher education) based upon personal experiences, as well as the existing literature (e.g., Kezar & Lester, 2009; Lester & Kezar, 2012; Schoorman & Acker-Hocevar, 2010). NOTE: Sponsored by the Early Career Caucus

Media coverage of Michael Brown’s murder and Ferguson protests have brought into the national spotlight issues that have affected communities of color, particularly black communities, for decades. Although various activist organizations have joined in solidarity with this movement (Bosman, 2014), mainstream media attention is waning and the U.S. government has taken a passive approach (Horwitz & Kindy, 2014; Trott, 2014). As students in counseling psychology, we have found ourselves wondering what the role of psychologists (and future psychologists) can and should be in this movement. Within our own graduate program, a discussion group has evolved out of these events, but deciding how to take action beyond discussion has proven more difficult to accomplish. Racial justice is long overdue--over 150 years since the abolition of slavery, and we are still waiting. Considering the conference theme, we seek to explore what restorative justice might look like in in the case of communities like Ferguson. In areas with a long history of institutional power being used to exploit and oppress, where might the community even begin to restore justice? How can psychologists be most helpful to the social movements already in progress to combat these injustices? What about graduate students? Certainly, research on white privilege and racial prejudice has been one major contribution of the field and should not be discounted. For example, Eberhardt, Goff, Purdie and Davies (2004) found that white males processed weapon imagery faster when primed with black male faces compared to the no-prime control and processed these same images slower when primed with white faces compared to the no-prime control. Although published in 2004, the research remains pertinent today and has clear implications for legislation surrounding events like Michael Brown’s murder. But what is our responsibility to more immediate action when innocent people are dying?