EPA conference Update, February 22
Orientation and Instructions for the virtual meeting can be accessed here now.
Starting on February 25, you will be able to login to the EPA meeting by clicking here: EPA Virtual
EPA conference Update, February 9
As we announced previously, you must register for the meeting (joining EPA or renewing your EPA membership) by February 25 to be guaranteed access to all features of the virtual app. Since you will login to the meeting using your email address, as it is stored in the EPA membership database, it is important for you to check that your profile in our system has your correct email address. We will not check it for you. Simply login to the EPA website, click on profile, and make any changes that are necessary. It is not sufficient that your name is on a poster or oral presentation – you must be an EPA member or associate to attend the meeting.
On February 25, we will send you an email with a link to the meeting app along with instructions for using the app. That link will also be published on the website. You will then be able to login to the meeting starting on Feb 25 and continuing through March 5 and 6.
EPA Conference Updates, February 2
Materials submission deadline: February 5. As announced previously (see below), all materials (poster pdfs, video links) are due to Dr. Lamoureux by Feb 5 (lamourje@bc.edu).
Registration deadline: Feb 25. To ensure admission to the March 5-6 conference and full access to all features of the virtual app, please register by renewing your EPA membership, or joining EPA for the first time by Feb 25.
Login instructions and meeting orientation will be sent to all members by email and will appear in this space as well in the coming weeks.
Program: A copy of the printed program will be sent to EPA Fellows, 125th Anniversary Members and to all members/associates who ordered one. Please check your mailing address in our database to ensure proper and timely delivery.
Previous Meeting Updates
Acceptance notices were sent out by email in mid-December. If you did not receive notification, please contact Paul Schnur at epaexecofficer@gmail.com. The March 5-6 EPA program and calendar are now available here. If you are presenting a poster, paper or symposium, you can find your name in the index, your assigned session and your presentation time in the program. This is also your first opportunity to view the entire program and begin to plan your virtual visit. Further information about the virtual conference app will be available in the coming weeks. In the meantime, please note the following important information:
The next deadline that you must observe is February 5. If you fail to meet this deadline, your submission will be cancelled. By this date, you must submit, one or more of the following:
1] If you are presenting a poster, a pdf copy of your poster is required. Your poster should include an introduction, methods, results and discussion. Figure and tables may be included. References are not required. The poster should fit on one page. Sample posters are available for viewing here: Lamoureux et al., Cuevas et al., Weiss-Rice et al., Hancock et al. A video (live or prerecorded) is optional but recommended. A video of you describing your research, whether paper or poster, is an engaging way to help your audience understand your research. Our virtual conference platform does not host videos, so a prerecorded video must be saved on some other video-hosting platform (e.g., youtube, vimeo, etc). You may alternatively (or additionally) schedule a live video session to discuss your proposal and answer questions from attendees. Whether you prerecord or present live, you will need to submit the URL(s) to those video features by the Feb 5 deadline. Please send all materials for poster presentations (i.e., poster PDF, and optional video links) to: lamourje@bc.edu.
2] If you are presenting a paper or symposium: We plan to hold oral paper and symposium sessions as live video meetings (Zoom, Webex, Teams, etc), hosted by the chair of the individual session. Your session chair will contact you and discuss the manner in which your session will be run. We envision that most sessions will simply involve the chair allowing each speaker, in turn, to share their screen to present the slides for their presentation. If you are not able to attend the live session, you could instead pre-record your presentation and upload it to a video-hosting site (e.g., youtube, vimeo, etc). In that case, you would need to submit the URL of the recording by the Feb 5 deadline. All such links to prerecorded content should be sent to: lamourje@bc.edu.
If you are unable to present at any time between 8AM Friday, Mar 5 and 4PM Saturday, Mar 6, we need to know that immediately. The program is posted above for you to check your exact time of presentation. You will also receive a link to the virtual meeting prior to the meeting. The meeting will be hosted on the Certain/Touchpoint platform, which is accessible on either PC, tablet or smart phone. The meeting dashboard will contain links to all live sessions and pre-recorded content. You will be able to personalize your own profile on the app and use it to chat via text with presenters, friends, and other conference attendees.
Please adhere to the Feb 5 deadline. With many institutions delaying the start of their spring semesters, we understand that it may be challenging to finalize presentation materials by that date, but we need to adhere to that timeline in order to upload all meeting content to the virtual conference platform. If you can get your materials to us before that date, that would be helpful and we would appreciate it. We will be contacting you again in the coming weeks with demos and samples that may be helpful to you in finalizing your presentation materials.
EPA 2021
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association will be held virtually on March 5-6, 2021. The call for submissions was sent to members, fellows and associates on September 5, 2020. If you are not a current member of EPA but would like to submit for the upcoming meeting, you may join EPA by following the links on this website. Since the meeting is virtual, we hope to hear from our US and international colleagues who otherwise might be unable to attend an EPA meeting. Instructions for submitting your proposal can be found elsewhere on this website. Please watch this space for updates and further information about the meeting.
COVID-19: How to think about it
Our brains are wired to think about the consequences of our behavior. How should we think about our risk of contracting COVID-19? Two eminent psychologists and friends of EPA answer the question in a recent NBCNEWS article. Edward Wasserman is the Stuit professor of psychological and brain sciences at The University of Iowa. At this year’s EPA virtual conference, Ed delivered the R.L. Solomon Distinguished lecture entitled, “Precrastination, Anticipation, and Signalization:Implications For Adaptive Action.” Thomas Zentall is the DiSilvestro professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky, an EPA Fellow and past president of EPA.
You can read the article here.
Statement From EPA on systemic racism
In this moment when the institutional and systemic racism of our culture has been brought into focus by worldwide condemnation of the callous and brutal murder of Black individuals by the police, the EPA Board of Directors is considering our responsibility as a scientific organization to reduce racism. We are taking an uncomfortable look at ourselves as professionals and EPA as an organization. Although none of us condones the inequalities in education, health care, and justice that are systemic in our country, we recognize that we cannot remain silent about them while fulfilling our mission to present and advance the science of psychology in our annual meetings. We need to acknowledge that the lack of diversity within the leadership of EPA reflects the fact that we have not had an intentional and organized strategy to include and support our colleagues of color. This is unacceptable. Therefore, EPA is developing an action plan that builds upon the science of psychology to address the inequities and racism that we and many others have identified.
Our plan of action includes: 1] a commitment to themes for our next two meetings that specifically address aspects of systemic racism in historical context (2021) and in our educational system (2022); 2] a commitment to recruiting and mentoring members of underrepresented groups into the EPA leadership and conference programming; 3] a commitment to the long-term by establishing concrete, measurable actions to be met annually and that will be shared with our community. This needs to be a long-term commitment as only sustained effort will bring about change. This year for the first time we have some content contributed by the SPARK Society, an organization of cognitive scientists of color, as a part of our meeting. We will work to include more organizations like SPARK. Psychological research has shown all too clearly that bias is a part of everything we do; EPA as a scientific society is committed to finding ways to mitigate that bias within ourselves and the wider world.
WHO WE ARE
Eastern Psychological Association (EPA) was founded in 1896 and is the oldest of the regional Psychological Associations in the United States. Its sole purpose is to advance the science and profession through the dissemination of professional information about the field of Psychology. EPA achieves this goal by conducting its annual meeting where the members of EPA present the latest advances in professional and scientific work to their colleagues. EPA welcomes psychologists from all fields across the discipline.
By becoming a member of Eastern Psychological Association, you 'join hands' with a group whose interests are as varied as the field itself. EPA proudly counts Psychologists of every stripe as members from clinicians to neuroscientists; from experimental psychologists of every type to applied psychologists in private practice, industry and the military. EPA represents all of the richness of our field, and EPA welcomes you to the community of psychology. We encourage you to join and be an active participant. Read More
