SIOP’s APA Committee is pleased to announce a fantastic program for the 2017 APA Convention! We have a wide range of programming (invited addresses, symposiums, panel discussions, conversation hours, skill building sessions, etc.) offered by researchers and practitioners from around the world. Here are some highlights:

The August edition of The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist (TIP) will mark the end of the 2-year tenure of our current TIP-TOPics columnists: Grace Ewles, Jessica Sorenson, and Thomas Sasso, from the University of Guelph. As they prepare to depart the TIP team, we begin a new search for columnists to continue the tradition of communicating the graduate student experience within the webpages of TIP.

What is the disconnect between the issues of List and McDaniel's (2016) and Locke (2016)?  I was instructed that scientific research in our area can be described as in an exploratory stage, and the goal is identifying and measuring variables of potential interest.  After a manageable number of correlations can be summarized by competitive theories, testable and comparable hypotheses are derived and subjected to plausible rejection. Those surviving rigorous tests to disconfirm are tentatively accepted as useful (Meehl, 1977).  The initial stage has no rules, but the suggestion is that one should functionally use data and imagination and always follow orderly correlations (Locke, 2007, 2009; Harriman, 2010).

Dr. Paul W. Thayer was an industrial and organizational psychologist probably most distinguished by his professional service.  He was a fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA), American Psychological Society (APS), and Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP).  He received multiple awards for his service, including SIOP’s Distinguished Professional Contributions Award and its Distinguished Service Award, as well as the APA Award for Distinguished Service to Psychological Science. 

The SIOP Placement Center has been a popular resource at the annual conference since 1993. Although it initially started as a service connecting employers to prospective candidates, the Placement Center has quickly evolved into offering many additional supporting services for job seekers and employers alike. This year’s Placement Center is no exception, with several innovative events designed to help job seekers and employers maximize their conference experience.