���Ebola, Goals and Fire, Oh My���: Three Great Reasons to Go to the

“Ebola, Goals and Fire, Oh My”: Three Great Reasons to Go to the
2015 American Psychological Association Convention
Ann Huffman
Division 14 APA Program Chair
What do the Ebola outbreak, primed
goals, and fire departments all have in
common? These are the topics of the
invited speakers at Division 14’s program
at the American Psychological Association
Convention in Toronto this August! The
APA conference committee is very excited
about our sessions and the rest of the APA
program line up. The invited speaker on
Thursday is Toronto’s Fire Chief Jim Sales
from the fifth largest fire department in
North America. He will discuss issues the
fire service faces including recruitment,
leadership, and human resource management. He will pose the challenge: How can
psychology help? On Friday, the invited
speaker is our own Dr. Gary Latham. Dr.
Latham is the Secretary of State Professor
of Organizational Effectiveness Professor of
Organizational Behaviour and HR Management at University of Toronto. His presentation will examine the enduring effect of
a primed goal on organizational behavior,
replication experiments, and their congruence with Bargh’s automaticity model and
Locke and Latham’s goal setting theory. For
Saturday’s invited address, Dr. Amy Adler
will discuss Walter Reed Army Institute of
Research’s support to units deploying in
response to the Ebola outbreak in West
Africa and will share results concerning the
mental health and resilience of deploying
troops. In her talk, she will discuss some of
the work stressors related to soldiers who
The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist
are deployed in response to the Ebola outbreak. The talk will provide lessons learned
in conducting rapid response research
on behalf of a large organization and also
demonstrate findings regarding the mental
health and resilience of troops deployed in
support of humanitarian emergencies.
But the fun does not stop there! Division
14 has 16 other talks and two poster
sessions that focus on workplace and
organizational issues. The paper sessions
range in topics from ethical issues in the
workplace, leadership, work–family issues,
cross-cultural issues, and mindfulness.
There is a diverse offering of topics with
a focus on research, application, and
teaching. Some examples of symposia and
panels are Award Winning Faculty: Applications for Teaching Applied Psychology
and Management; Work Trends in the Military: Making Tomorrow’s Research Agenda
Today; and Environmental Sustainability at
Work: Understanding Workplace Behavior
and Motivations. I should note that this
impressive line up would not be possible
without the amazing APA Div. 14 committee and reviewers. Thanks to them and
last year’s committee chair, Dr. Autumn
Krauss, for all the help that they provided
in developing our program.
Last and definitely not least, Division 14
has organized a social that is not to be
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missed! With the help of Dr. Ron Myhr,
vice president of Professional Services
for the Canadian operation of CEB’s SHL
Talent Management Solutions, we have
put together an incredible Division 14
social. The social will take place at the
Steam Whistle Brewery (right next to the
conference center) Thursday night at 6:30
pm. The Brewery is located in a 1929 historical building at the old Canadian Pacific
Rail steam locomotive repair facility that
helped pioneer the nation. We hope that
Division 14 colleagues, friends, and future
friends will find this the perfect location to
see old friends, meet new friends, and talk
anything (or nothing) I-O! This social hour
is sponsored by SIOP, CEB’s SHL Talent
Management Solutions and MHS Talent
Assessment Solutions. We look forward to
networking and developing future relationships at the Steam Whistle Brewery
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I want to close this update with a reminder
of why I appreciate APA, a conference with
a very different focus than our traditional
SIOP. I really appreciate APA because of
the interdisciplinary nature of the conference. I am a work–family researcher, with
interests in environmental sustainability,
diversity, and military research. APA is a
“one-stop shop.” I can attend relevant
talks in many different divisions that help
broaden the way I think about I-O issues.
Getting different perspectives outside of
the typical I-O focus can be refreshing and
is really helpful for generating new and
creative ideas, both for my research as
well as in the classroom.
APA is August 6–9 at the Toronto Conference Center. Registration for APA begins
April 15th. You can learn more about the
conference, registration, and lodging at
the conference website (http://www.apa.
org/convention/). Hope to see you there!
April 2015, Volume 52, Number 4