We had a record turnout for our first Psi Chi/Twitmyer meeting last Friday.... standing room only at the end! Thanks to all who came & here's hoping we can keep up this level of student interest all year long!
Here is a summary of what was discussed:

*** If interested in any of the topics we discussed, please email us at aasu.psichitwitmyer@gmail.com ***

Applying for Psi Chi membership -- Applications to join Psi Chi are due to Dr. Frieder by 5 p.m. September 17th! As a reminder, students must meet the following criteria to join Psi Chi:
  • Have reached at least Sophomore status
  • Have an overall GPA of at least 3.0
  • Have completed at least 9 semester hours of Psychology course work
  • Have attained a GPA of at least 3.0 in all Psychology course work
Applying for Twitmyer membership -- No requirements at all, just having an interest in psychology! You can be a freshman with NO psychology course credits, majoring in a different field... that's fine! All you need to do is request to be added to our mailing list (send us an email at aasu.psichitwitmyer@gmail.com) come to our meetings, and voila, you are an official Twitmyer member!

Annual Dues for current Psi Chi members -- The $10 annual fee is due to Dr. Frieder by 5 p.m. on Sept. 17th.

T-shirt Sales -- We still have t-shirts that need to be sold! These are the light blue "Subliminal Message" shirts and they sell for $15. Please email us if you are interested in buying a shirt or selling them to your friends/family/classmates!

Savannah Day of Service (Sept. 18) -- AASU is participating in a city-wide day of community service on Saturday the 18th of September. Volunteer opportunities include things like cleaning up public areas, yard work, painting, light maintenance, and office work at facilities such as Hospice of Savannah, American Cancer Society, Second Harvest Food Bank, and even our own AASU campus. If anyone is interested, please email us and/or signup to be on the Day of Service committee.

Movie of the Month -- If members are interested in continuing the monthly showing of psychology-related movies selected by our faculty (seems like we are?), we will need to form a committee to handle organizing things like securing a room, setting up and testing equipment the day of, and communicating with the faculty scheduled to host movie nights.

Celebrate AASU Day (Oct. 20) -- We plan to have a table/booth at this year's AASU Day and are looking for ideas about how to make our booth stand out . Also, the possibility of having a raffle was discussed -- does anyone have connections to local businesses/people that could donate items for us to raffle?? We will also need volunteers to man the booth during the day (it's a Wednesday). So let us know your thoughts!

Panel Discussions -- A possible activity this year would be to organize a few panel discussions on topics our members find relevant. Panels would be populated by faculty members, professionals working in the community, alumni, representatives from grad programs, etc. Potential topics could be things like Careers in the Field of Psychology, Choosing and Preparing for Grad Programs, etc. Again, a committee needs to be formed to gauge the topics members are interested in and arrange relevant speakers.

Kicklighter Academy Benefit Auction (Sept. 10) -- Dr. Frieder works with the Kicklighter Academy (a school that works with special needs children and provides a "main-stream" learning environment for them) suggested that members may be interested in donating a service to be auctioned off at the academy's upcoming benefit. Some ideas for services we could donate are babysitting, petsitting, yard work, light maintenance, etc. This event is approaching quickly though, so interested members need to speak up NOW!!

Conference Calendar -- It was mentioned that many students are unaware of the conferences that are available for them to attend or even present at. Therefore, we would like 2 to 3 members to put together a directory of all conferences so that our members (and all psychology students) can be better informed of upcoming opportunities. So far Brandi and I have volunteered, but if anyone else is interested, please feel free to help out!

Psi Chi & Twitmyer Website and email address -- Juli had suggested that we might want to work on making the AASU Psi Chi and Twitmyer site a bit more interesting with pictures, etc. However apparently AASU will not allow you to alter their default template much at all, so posting a link to our own private page seemed our best option. We asked if any members were experienced in creating webpages, and literally 10 minutes after our meeting, new member Nip had secured us a page template AND a gmail address!! (aasu.psichitwitmyer@gmail.com) Thanks so much to Nip, Danielle, and Nate for helping us out and making our clubs look so professional! You guys rock!

Along those same lines, Alicia is planning to set up a facebook page for our clubs. We're entering the 21st century, people! ...10 years late, but still!! :)

This website is obviously still in its infancy and we need to do a lot of work on it, so anyone interested in helping us get it looking beautiful should email us pronto! Also, if anyone has any photos of previous Psi Chi / Twitmyer events, send them in! We would love to put together a slide showing our members in action. Any ideas of content you'd like to see on the site is welcome, as well.

Armstrong 5K "Pirates on the Run" (Sept. 25) -- Alicia plans to participate in the 5K and thought that it would be nice for Psi Chi/Twitmyer to have a presence in the event... and maybe wear our t-shirts. The registration fee is $20 ($22 after the 17th) and the run/walk will be held downtown. Sounds fun!

Tyson's Personal Mission: A Psi Chi Study Lounge -- Tyson announced that he has taken it as a personal mission to double membership in Psi Chi this year by trying to arrange a tangible (and pretty sweet if he pulls it off) reward for Psi Chi members -- our own study lounge. He's planning on talking with Armstrong administration, but could always use some help if anyone has any ideas to help him make this happen. Good luck, Tyson!

Well, that's it guys. We are looking forward to a great year! See you all soon!