By Eric Johnson, University of Massachusetts Lowell

In the following post, I will highlight the opportunities to complete a service term through various organizations such as the Peace Corps, Americorps, and Commonwealth Corps as viable options for gaining experiencing working in a community setting, and in laying the foundation for pursuing a career in community psychology.  As a new Commonwealth Corps member beginning their year of service in the community, I am inspired to spread this opportunity to other aspiring community psychologists, and hope that it may lead some readers to consider service positions as a way to improve training and preparation for a career in the field of community work.

Community psychology as a field is grounded in close collaboration and communication between community practitioners of various types, and academic groups leading research focused on strengthening communities through evidence supported means (Wolf and Scott 2015).  As a result, community psychologists must have experience working in community health settingsas part of their education and training, and must approach their community work from a background in the foundational principles of the field.  Service positions created by organizations such as the Peace Corps, Americorps, and the Commonwealth Corps for residents of Massachusetts, offer excellent opportunities to gain direct experience with community work, and professional development training that aligns with many of the focuses of Community Psychology for aspiring Community Psychologists.

After enrolling in a Master of the Arts in Community Social Psychology program at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, I happened across an opening for a full-time service position through the Commonwealth Corps at the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Lowell where I had recently begun volunteering.  Many of the messages emphasized at the Commonwealth Corps member orientation were echoed during the first meeting of my Intro to Community Social Psychology course, and the assigned reading for class.  Here are some of the orientation messages that showed high similarity to principles of community psychology:

• The importance of learning to adapt to the community members serve in andbuilding greater sociocultural and cross-cultural competence through close partnerships with community members and organizations.
• Striving to create sustainable change, in which an organization or community members are able to continue the benefits even after the term of service ends.
• Focus on empowering community members to gain access to available resources and achieve personal success.

These three points are also reflected in the list of eighteen competencies presented by Victoria C. Scott and Susan M. Wolfe in Chapter 2 of their textbook Community Psychology: Foundations for Practice (2015), meant to outline the various skills desired for a successful community psychologist.  In particular, Scott and Wolf (2015) list “Empowerment”, “Sociocultural and Cross-Cultural Competence”, and “Community Inclusion and Partnerships” as three of the five Foundational Principles of Community Psychology (Scott and Wolf, 44).Through a year of service, a person called to work in the community can gain crucial experience and professional development training grounded in thefoundational principles of community psychology,leading to later career opportunities in the field.

For my year of service at the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Lowell, I am fulfilling the role of Teen Career Success Coordinator, and will be facilitating programs for teens focused on academic success, and preparation for college and careers.  Over the course of my year of service, I will gain experience partnering with community members and organizations, andwill build upon my sociocultural and cross-cultural competency skills while serving to empower teens in the community of Lowell to pursue college and lay the foundation for achieving their career goals.  Continuing my education in a Master of the Arts in Community Social Psychology program at UMass Lowellwhile serving in the community of Lowell will jointly provide a hugely beneficial experiential foundation for pursuing future opportunities in the field of community psychology.

Increased partnerships between service organizations and university graduate programs in Community Psychology could help connect those looking to pursue a career in community psychology with a great opportunity to gain valuable experience, or connect alumni of service programs to higher education in community psychology to further their training.As a result, the field of Community Psychology gains well-trained and competent community psychologists, who then may put their skills to use to strengthen their various communities and improve well-being for all their members.  As the field improves and matures, its ability to create positive change in communities across the world increases as well.

To anyone interested in pursuing a career working in community psychology, I strongly recommend exploring options for committing to a service term in order to gain experience to pursue a career in community psychology work while giving back to your community.  In addition, I argue for increased partnerships between service organizations such as the Peace Corps, Americorps, and Commonwealth Corps and university graduate programs in Community Psychology, in order to expand opportunities for those pursuing community work to gain first-hand experience and educational training.  Such partnerships would strengthen the field as a whole, improving the positive effect it can have on communities across the world.

#commpsych

Eric Johnson is a graduate student in the Community Social Psychology program at the University of Massachusetts. 

 References

Scott, V. C., &Wolfe, S. M., (2015).Community Psychology: Foundations for practice.Sage Publications.

by Aimee Coombs, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Image credit: https://shaketheworldforchange.wordpress.com/2014/06/04/introduction-to-the-project/

Individuals working in the field of community psychology should approach their work, within a community, with different strategies and perspectives to gain a holistic understanding of the community they’re working with. One particular perspective is the ecological approach which allows the community psychologist to understand how the intricate ways of different parts of the community affect oneanother. Understanding the interdependence that each system has, and how each part of the system affects the other, can serve as a guide in determining practices and interventions that may be used or implemented to help serve the community.

Having the broader perspective of a community allows for a community psychologist to identify the multiple parts, and relationships, within a social system that are in need of assistance and those that will be reinforced. Failing to have a broad view of the community could lead to key areas of the social system that are in need of assistance to be overlooked and neglected, which in turn will inadvertently lead to the interventions implemented to fail. An example of an ecological perspective offered by Scott & Wolff  (2015), is the issue of global warming being caused by carbon dioxide. Looking at carbon dioxide as the sole reason for global warming fails to encompass the whole picture of the entire system that contributes to this problem. One needs to consider the effects that society imposes on the earth and adopt solutions that would incorporate the total social system to bring about changes that would lower carbon dioxide emissions to levels that would resolve the issue of global warming. Looking at the problem from just the standpoint of carbon dioxide levels being too high, fails to understand all the components that contribute to the problem and without considering those components, appropriate solutions to the problem will not be implemented.

Some ideas to consider in helping to develop an ecological perspective are:

• Develop an awareness of the social connection within a community and its members. Knowing how the community is interdependent on each other can help guide a community psychologist in working with the members and developing a working relationship that will lead to solutions to the community’s issues.
• Assuring that those in the community who have been disregarded by other members are given a voice and that they are “recycled” by being trained for their new roles in the community.
• Create feedback loops to help determine whether an intervention is working or not. Having these feedback loops helps give members of the community an opportunity to voice if the impact of the intervention is having a positive or negative effect within the community. Feedback loops help make a community more adaptable and sustainable (Scott & Wolfe, 2015).
• Encourage diversity within the community. Diversity offers many perspectives that help brainstorming solutions to resolve issues in the community.
• Promote a balanced leadership model by having an appropriate balance of hierarchal and communal processes (Stone & Wolfe, 2015).

Community psychologists who incorporate these ideas into their practice will develop an ecological perspective that will help them acquire the ability to see the whole social structure that contributes to the issues of the community. Having this skill will better serve the community when confronted with issues that are in need of resolution and an ecological lens is needed to determine the solutions that will bring about positive change.

#commpsych

Aimee Coombs is a graduate student in the Autism Studies program at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

References

Scott, V.  &  Wolfe, S.M.  (2015).  Community Psychology Foundations for Practice. United States of America: SAGE.

By Mallory Stamp and Andrew Hostetler

“This issue [hunger on campus] needs to be solved, to make sure everyone is sufficiently well-fed” – Teresa Shroll.

Support Our Students (SOS) is a nonprofit organization that focuses on issues of hunger and food security in the UMass Lowell Community. The cofounders of this organization are three Community Social Psychology students: Mary Tauras ’15, Teresa Shroll ’15, and Sadie Prickett ’15. The idea for SOS was initially inspired by their faculty adviser, Khanh Dinh, when she introduced them to programs in Europe, where food products are sold at lower costs for community members in need. Mary, Teresa, and Sadie wanted to do a similar program locally, but realized Lowell already had a local food bank and other programs. Prof. Dinh informed them about the DifferenceMaker program, a competitive program through which they could learn entrepreneurial skills by participating in workshops and various events. Their participation in this program, for which they took the top prize, changed their vision, and they shifted their focus to feeding students on the UMass Lowell campus.

The CSP team recruited students from other programs and majors, including psychology (undergraduates), business, nutrition, and computer science. SOS credits its success in large part to the diversity of its team. On both North and South Campus, SOS has worked to bring awareness about food insecurity to the UMass Lowell community, including through game nights, “Hawk Talk: Eat This Not That,” 15 minute class presentations, tabling for donations, and the First Annual SOS Oatmeal Challenge.

To ensure the continuing success of the organization, the cofounders have collaborated with over 30 campus and community organizations. Since implementing their program in September, over 1000 students have donated meals and a total of 40 students have been provided meals. Mary, Teresa, Sadie, and team are happy with what the organization has achieved thus far, but feel there is a lot of more work to be done, and they see SOS as a work in progress.

Getting involved in the Psychology Graduate Student Organization (PGSO) is an enriching opportunity for first and second year students to engage with one another, take ownership of their program (Autism Studies and Community Social Psychology) and their department. Students engaged in the PGSO can make connections with the larger campus community and other graduate students, and plan and help run events reflective of collective needs and interests. It is a great option if you have ideas but are not sure where to suggest them or if you want to step into a leadership role and build community in the department, on campus and beyond. This article is meant to share the value of the PGSO and ask students to consider how it can develop in future semesters to be a stronger and more utilized resource for students.

So what does the PGSO do? What can we do?
Previous years members have organized fundraisers for local charities, socials, discussion forums, and have supported other initiatives to educate or raise awareness about a particular social issue. The PGSO is our forum to engage with our community and collectively give back. Some ideas our current executive board has talked about have included screening documentaries, participating in the Relay for Life walk, creating a self-care workshop for students, identifying and acquiring additional resources to support strong and innovative academic work, and helping our faculty organize and manage the logistics involved with the biennial SCRA conference this June. Often such events are designed by and intended for students, which means the more students engaged in the process the better.

Our graduate programs are designed to help us identify needs and be of service to constituents, often through the act of allyship and advocacy. The PGSO can be one vehicle where students can promote and share ideas or action steps they believe should be disseminated to the wider community. It can also be utilized as a space to learn about fellow student’s work, to support and motivate one another, and to share research and other resources.

We asked the current executive team of the PGSO why they joined, why they think it’s important that students get involved, and how the PGSO can help serve the UMass Lowell community and the community at large. Here were some of their answers:

Charlotte Wilinsky, CSP, Secretary of PGSO, 2014-2015.
I joined the PGSO because it seemed like a great opportunity to become more involved in the graduate program. The PGSO has so much potential to connect students and faculty, and our graduate programs with other parts of the campus and community, and I liked the idea that as a group we could develop these areas even more.

Kaitlin Stoll, CSP, Vice-President of the PGSO, 2014-2015.
I think it’s important for students to get involved because they can help make their graduate experience better. By being a part of the PGSO you are able to have your voice heard. It’s also an added bonus that you get to know your peers on a more intimate level.

Liz Ejaife, CSP. President of the PGSO, 2014-2015. I joined PGSO because I wanted to be more involved in my program and get to know my fellow CSP and ASP students. I think it is important that students get involved with PGSO because for the next 2 years, we are going to be learning and sharing experiences with each other so forming a stronger bond can help enrich that experience.

Graduates in Psychology have many skills and a great deal to share. By coming together we continue to grow and learn from one another and give back to the larger community. By doing so, we take advantage of all our chosen program has to offer.

The PGSO will continue to meet throughout the this hectic and snowy semester and we sincerely hope to see you there!
Feel free to email the President, Liz Ejaife, OfaLiz_Ejaife@student.uml.edu with any questions or suggestions.

Onward and outward!
Mary Tauras, CSP.
Treasurer and Senator of the PGSO, 2014-2015.

One distinctive feature of CSP is that it engages with the community around us. Much of our program involves not just studying communities in the abstract, but interacting with and learning directly from Lowell’s community leaders and members.

We are fortunate that the Lowell community gives us such excellent opportunities to do so. These opportunities are found through papers or projects in most CSP courses, through theses, and of course through Practicum.Another opportunity comes from interactions we have with community members within our regular classes. A good example of that comes from the Advanced Community Dynamics class this semester, which focuses on learning about community life in practice, using Lowell as an extended case example.

In this ACD class, students selected topics they wanted to learn more about: Food, Women, Youth, Media, and Parks and Recreation were the top vote-getters. Student teams then took the lead in bringing in small groups of community representatives to talk about that topic with the full class. Thanks to the outstanding enterprise and resourcefulness of our students, we’ve had the chance to meet and learn from a particularly impressive variety of guests, including directors or senior managers from the Lowell Plan, Merrimack Valley Food Bank, Boys and Girls Club, Girls, Inc., YMCA, Teen Block program, Massachusetts Association of Portuguese Speakers, UMass/Lowell Food Services, Lowell National Historical Park, Lowell Parks and Conservation Commission, and the Lowell Folk Festival, as well as the Editor of theLowell Sun, the Owner and Editor of theKhmer Post, the owners of WCAP radio and of a popular downtown sweet shop, and Lowell’s Director of Community Development.

A related class event is a city-wide forum scheduled for late April, designed to bring together a larger group of community leaders to talk about ideas for Lowell’s future and how they could be put into practice. All are invited to this meeting, which will be held on Tuesday, April 22 from 3:30 ‘ 5:00 p.m. in HSSB 120.

Through these community discussions, we develop closer relationships with our community leaders. These we think benefit not only our students, but the community as well. A basic community psychology principle is that open dialogue tends to foster mutual understanding, appreciation, and trust; this in turn stimulates new ideas, and sometimes new collaborations that can help everyone.

There’s plenty of room for more such dialogue occasions; it’s possible for CSP to take the lead in organizing them. We could plan regular community dialogues on different topics. We could host a community speaker series.We could hold an annual open house. An added advantage here for us is that such visibility also attracts students to our program. And more than that: Since many CSP students go on to work in the Greater Lowell community after graduation, this leads to our having an ongoing network of community contacts in the City and throughout the Merrimack Valley.

Of course, another major opportunity to interact with the community will be our hosting of a national community conference (the SCRA Biennial) in June, 2015, when community psychologists from across the U.S. and beyond will visit our community and our program, and hopefully share ideas and experiences with community members while they are here, so that we can all learn together.

Developing relationships with the community helps everyone. And that’s been a goal of CSP since its beginning ‘ to join with our community members in building better communities, and to help strengthen community life by being resources and supports for one another.

~~ Bill Berkowitz

UMass Lowell Highlights

The Society for Community Research and Action (SCRA, Division 27 of the APA) hosted their biennial conference in Miami this past summer and UMass Lowell faculty and students presented their research and engaged in dialogues on a number of topics. Here is just a sampling of what faculty and students had to offer:

Student Presenters

Four recently graduated CSP students attended the conference and contributed their research to other professionals in the field of Community Psychology. Hannah Johnson and Kristy Shockley presented a poster on ‘Community Participations’ Role in Issue Campaigning’ which included an archival analysis of a local Lowell non-profit to examine the process of community organizing and how community participation can benefit issue campaigns. Marlene Abreu, along with Professor Ashleigh Hillier, presented a poster on how disability services are utilized in a university setting and found that the most used service is extended time on tests. Recent graduate Susie Paterson participated in a symposium on empowerment tools and presented her thesis research findings on women’s subversive use of humor. Susie Paterson mentioned that she was pleased and surprised that the Community Psychology values she learned in the CSP program were actually very evident in the way people at the conference interacted with one another. She also relayed that it was a fun, enlightening experience and hopes that other CSP students will attend the next biennial.

Faculty Research

Professors Meg Bond, Robin Toof, and Michelle Haynes hosted a roundtable discussion on ‘Transforming settings for social change’ in which they discussed the conceptual frameworks of community settings, approaches for assessing, and strategies for intervention on multiple levels. Meanwhile, Professor Urmitapa Dutta took part in a roundtable discussion on ethical dilemmas that may arise when engaging youth in participatory action research. Professor Andrew Hostelter organized, chaired, and participated in a symposium on ‘Engaging Seniors in Healthier Communities’ in which he discussed his research on senior centers and the data he acquired from interviews, focus groups, and computerized tracking of participant activities at senior centers around the Northeast. He also participated in a roundtable discussion on teaching methods and presented a poster describing the successes and failures of the course structure for his Advanced Community Dynamics class from the spring 2013 semester.

SCRA 2015 Biennial in Lowell

The next SCRA Biennial will be held from June 25-28, 2015 right here in Lowell! Current students and CSP alumni are encouraged to attend and submit proposals to highlight their research. The SCRA Biennial is a wonderful place to find out what is happening in Community Psychology both at other Universities and non-profit organizations. Students considering application for PhD programs may find it especially helpful to meet faculty and students from other universities to get a sense of where they want to apply. I attended the 2011 SCRA Biennial while taking undergraduate courses and the students I met there from the CSP program are the very reason why I am here today!

In 2007, the Center for Women & Work hosted its first ever Women’s Works event as a celebration of the creativity of UMass Lowell affiliated craftswomen. Five years, the annual Women’s Works event has expanded to celebrate the creative lives of women artists beyond the borders of the university grounds. This year, the event is boasting nearly 40 female artists and performers, all gathering to celebrate the often private world of women’s creative pursuits.

The Women’s Works event has three major goals. The first is as a fundraiser for the Center for Women & Work, a University research center committed to the advancement of women and diversity in the work force. The Center for Women & Work is comprised of an interdisciplinary team of dedicated scholars and students invested in the exploration of the role of gender in work as well as a commitment to developing programming that addresses the institutional inequities faced by diverse groups. Women’s Works is one of two major fundraising events for the Center: vendors agree to donate 25 percent of their proceeds to the Center after the event.

The second goal of the Women’s Works event is to provide voice to the often private realm of women’s creativity. Most of the vendors featured at the event have a professional life that is entirely detached from their creative pursuits: a psychiatric nurse makes intricate handmade cards, an English professor designs colorful stained glass, and a retired optician knits wool hats. The skill of these crafts often remains under-appreciated as women consider them hobbies tangential to their professional work. The Women’s Works even provides a public forum for women to share their own work and celebrate the works of others in the context of acknowledging the personal and social value of such creative endeavors.

The third goal of the Women’s Works event is to foster a spirit of entrepreneurship among craftswomen. Some of the vendors have well-established small businesses dedicated to their artistic pursuits, while other vendors have never even considered that their skills could be financially lucrative. The Women’s Works event encourages women to recognize and be compensated for the monetary value of their work, and to network with other successful female entrepreneurs while considering the potential of their own crafts to move from hobby to business.

Like all the years before, this year’s Women’s Works event promises to be a vibrant, energetic opportunity for members of the Lowell community to explore the more creative side of many of the people we interact with professionally every day. The event is open to the public and we encourage anyone interested to stop by, check out the vendors, bid on a silent auction item and support the Center for Women & Work.

WHEN: Thursday, November 29th from 2-7pm

WHERE: UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center (50 Warren St., Downtown Lowell, MA)

5pm for Wine & Cheese with special performances