Since its emergence, industrial-organizational psychology has been required to adapt to market trends, industry demands, and the increasing capabilities of technology in order to remain competitive; a challenge within an increasingly globalized market. The issue of globalization has been a “hot topic” for years, and remains one of the top challenges for related fields, including human resources management (Vorhauser-Smith, 2016) and has been identified by leading I-O practitioners as one of the key future directions for our field (Silzer & Cober, 2010). Moreover, with the increasing need for a cross-cultural understanding of organizational phenomena, those in academia are also recognizing the importance of global considerations in both the design and application of research. As a result, globalization has become a key consideration within our field for both research and practice, and should become formalized within graduate students’ learning and experiences. We present this column to encourage more holistic and globally aware graduates in I-O.

We within the LGBT SIOP committee want to make a difference within the field of industrial-organizational psychology and within SIOP by increasing exposure to the experiences of sexual orientation and gender identity minorities within the realms of research and practice. We believe that one method by which this can occur is through making regular, novel contributions to the literature, by filling preexisting gaps may leave LGBT individuals overlooked. However, we realize that it is also important to educate researchers and practitioners who might not be familiar with the basic issues that LGBT people face.

Recently my department decided to offer our undergraduate Research Methods in Psychology course in a fully online format, and I am slotted to teach the first section in fall 2016. I have never taught an online class before and have mixed feelings about it.

The ostensible (and laudable) goal of offering this class fully online is to serve students who require it to complete their degrees but cannot attend classes in person because they have since started full time jobs or relocated, and so on. As such, this class will be fully online (i.e., no formal in-class meetings) and asynchronous (i.e., no formal real-time interactions between teacher and students). I have received fantastic support from my college to develop the class. I was awarded a year-long teaching fellowship by Baruch’s Center for Teaching and Learning to attend their series of workshops designed to support faculty in developing their hybrid/online classes.

When I was considering academic positions over 3 years ago (which, by the way, how has it already been 3 years?!), there were so many factors to consider. What was the reputation and atmosphere of the school and department? Was the location going to be nice? Was Mike going to be able to find work? Would I be teaching the types of classes that I wanted to be teaching? Were the tenure requirements reasonable or insane? There were so many things to account for, and so many ways to justify the answers to the aforementioned questions if things didn’t quite fit with the expectations I had at the time. However, one aspect of my job search was a big non-negotiable: I wanted to work somewhere that had a PhD program.

We in I-O are fairly sporting when it comes to discussing the ambiguities and contradictions and inconsistencies associated with the nuances of human behavior in the workplace—cheers to us. We seem to falter, though, when it comes to talking about the future: the future of work, of organizations, of SIOP, of our own jobs. Our narratives become jumbled; we start talking past each other, focusing on different criteria, making different assumptions. Our background in science doesn’t prepare us to have meaningful conversations about speculation, prophecy, conjecture. This may be a point to our credit on most days, but it will not serve us if and when the world changes and we are caught off guard and unprepared.