In the spirit of self-improvement that my friend Marcus Dickson imprinted into the DNA of this column when he created it, I’d like to admit to a personal failing: I’m terrible at remembering peoples’ names. I’m the kind of awful person you meet at a party who forgets your name 3 seconds after you said it. I’ll remember everything else about our conversation but not your name. I took several cognitive psych classes as a student, so I know about different encoding strategies—I never remember to use them! It’s not something that I’m proud of, and it’s also a professional handicap, especially at the beginning of a new semester when you meet dozens of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed students in the classroom. So over the years I’ve developed some strategies for remembering students’ names that I’d like to share with you in the hopes that you find some of them useful. 

The Wiley Award recognizes innovation and effectiveness in the design and implementation of customer or employee surveys. To merit award, nominated research must demonstrate innovation and effectiveness throughout multiple phases of the research. The 2018 Wiley Award winners of Catherine (Carrie) J. Ott-Holland (Google, Inc.), William (Will) J. Shepherd (Wendy’s Corporation), and Ann Marie Ryan (Michigan State University) exemplified innovation and effectiveness throughout the project’s entire lifecycle including conceptualization (e.g., examining actual change of employee outcomes), data collection (e.g., partnering with third party data management services to avoid data identifiability and privacy issues), data analysis (e.g., multilevel structural equation model with probit links), through reporting and publishing the project’s results in Journal of Occupational Health Psychology (see below for full paper reference). In this issue of the Awards Spotlight column, we interviewed the project’s two first authors (Carrie and Will, pictured below) to learn in more detail about these innovations. Our questions and the authors’ paraphrased responses can be found below.

As Talya Bauer stated in her January 2019 President’s Message, the integration of science and practice will be a key focus during her leadership. As a first step, the Science–Practice Opportunities for Translation (SPOT) Task Force was established, and newly appointed team members already have been busy working on new strategies—like the creation of the Scientist–Practitioner Presidential Recognition Award—and strengthening existing ones.

A little over 2 weeks ago, I (Dorothy) traveled for many hours in order to attend a fascinating small group meeting in Berlin, Germany where I presented research that my graduate student and coauthor of this column, Hayley Trainer, and I are working on together related to leadership networks and gender. The conference was organized and hosted by a multidisciplinary group of researchers, including Professor of Evolutionary Psychology, Work and Organizational Psychology Mark van Vugt and scholars from fields like Biology, Zoology, and Anthropology, who are interested in laying a foundation for research on “female leadership in human and other mammalian societies.” I thoroughly enjoyed meeting, talking with, and learning from these amazing researchers, and I left feeling incredibly inspired and full of fresh ideas. Then, last week, we (Dorothy & Hayley) traveled a much shorter distance to attend another fascinating conference in Pine Mountain, Georgia hosted by the Georgia Clinical and Translational Science Alliance (CTSA). The Georgia CTSA, which is funded by the National Institutes of Health, aims to accelerate clinical and translational research, education, and community engagement in Georgia and beyond and, in particular, speed the translation of observations in the laboratory, clinic, and community into interventions that improve public health. Hayley and I attended this conference in our capacity as part of the “evaluation and continuous improvement” team that helps ensure the Georgia CTSA system is meeting its objectives and also because we are collecting and analyzing data related to “scientific teamwork” using CTSA scientists as our sample. Hayley and I left this conference with a clearer picture of how to frame our paper and also how to contribute to the bigger picture goals of the project.

A little over 2 weeks ago, I (Dorothy) traveled for many hours in order to attend a fascinating small group meeting in Berlin, Germany where I presented research that my graduate student and coauthor of this column, Hayley Trainer, and I are working on together related to leadership networks and gender. The conference was organized and hosted by a multidisciplinary group of researchers, including Professor of Evolutionary Psychology, Work and Organizational Psychology Mark van Vugt and scholars from fields like Biology, Zoology, and Anthropology, who are interested in laying a foundation for research on “female leadership in human and other mammalian societies.” I thoroughly enjoyed meeting, talking with, and learning from these amazing researchers, and I left feeling incredibly inspired and full of fresh ideas. Then, last week, we (Dorothy & Hayley) traveled a much shorter distance to attend another fascinating conference in Pine Mountain, Georgia hosted by the Georgia Clinical and Translational Science Alliance (CTSA). The Georgia CTSA, which is funded by the National Institutes of Health, aims to accelerate clinical and translational research, education, and community engagement in Georgia and beyond and, in particular, speed the translation of observations in the laboratory, clinic, and community into interventions that improve public health. Hayley and I attended this conference in our capacity as part of the “evaluation and continuous improvement” team that helps ensure the Georgia CTSA system is meeting its objectives and also because we are collecting and analyzing data related to “scientific teamwork” using CTSA scientists as our sample. Hayley and I left this conference with a clearer picture of how to frame our paper and also how to contribute to the bigger picture goals of the project.