HIGH POINT, N.C., March 24, 2014 – Dr. Sadie Leder Elder, assistant professor of psychology, co-presented a research presentation titled, “Mentorship of Early Career Psychologists: Suggestions for New and Experienced Faculty Members,” at this year’s annual Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) conference.

Dr. Elder was among a handful of early career psychologists selected for inclusion in the Society for the Teaching of Psychology’s Early Career Psychologist Council. Over the past three years she has worked with others across the nation to generate and disseminate teaching related resources. This past year, in her role as co-chair of the ECP Council, Elder helped to design and administer a survey on mentoring to a nationwide sample of ECPs. Her co-presenter, Dr. Jordan Troisi, is also a member of the Early Career Psychologist Council.

“Although widely accepted that mentoring is important for the development of early career faculty, there is surprisingly little research on this relationship,” says Elder.  “The work presented in this talk provides a much needed step towards illuminating the role between mentoring in both teaching effectiveness and professional development of early career psychologists.”

Results of a national sample of early career psychologists revealed that, as anticipated, the more mentors one has the better their teaching performance. Those with more mentors reported improvements in teaching evaluations, greater attendance at teaching related conferences and more use of effective teaching practices.

Elder’s publications related to teaching effectiveness are available at:

http://top.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/09/03/0098628313501048.short

http://teachpsych.org/Resources/Documents/ebooks/intro2013.pdf

http://teachpsych.org/Resources/Documents/ebooks/ecp2013.pdf