Grants and opportunities

Up to $60,000 available for early career psychologists

APF is offering two new funding opportunities for new psychologists:

• The Esther Katz Rosen Early Career Research Grant will award one grant of up to $50,000 annually to support research that aims to develop the abilities of gifted and talented children and adolescents. Applicants must be psychologists with an EdD, PsyD, or PhD from an accredited university, with fewer than seven years of postdoctoral experience. The application deadline is May 1.

• The Kenneth B. and Mamie P. Clark Early Career Grant offers a $10,000 grant annually to support research and activities that promote the understanding of the relationship between self-identity and academic achievement, with an emphasis on children in grades K through eight. This grant seeks to build upon the work of Kenneth Clark, PhD, and Mamie Phipps Clark, PhD, by answering some of the questions they raised in their studies of children's attitudes about race. Applicants must be psychologists with an EdD, PsyD or PhD from an accredited university and have less than seven years of postdoctoral experience. The application deadline is June 15.

Two divisions launch funds

APA's Div. 39 (Psychoanalysis) and 42 (Psychologists in Independent Practice) have each pledged to create APF funds with member donations as a way to promote and support the next generation of students and early career psychologists:

• The Div. 39 Fund exceeded its $100,000 member donation goal in two years by giving $12,500 from its budget. The fund will offer grants that aim to keep the psychology community and the public informed of developments in psychoanalytic scholarship, research and practice.

• The Psychologists in Independent Practice Next Generation Fund has raised $40,000 toward its $100,000 goal. The fund will offer student and early career travel awards, grants for research that will benefit new psychologists, and grants for projects that encourage leadership among early career psychologists.

By starting a fund at APF, APA divisions and other psychological organizations can support students and worthwhile projects, and advance the cause of their group. APF handles all the administrative aspects of the grant-making, such as investments, tax filings, charitable registrations and accounting.

For more information on how your organization can start an APF fund, please contact Kimberly Palmer Rowsome at (202) 336-5622. To read about a Div. 49 (Society of Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy) pledge of $100,000 from its budget to establish a grant fund, see Grants to support groups.

Brian Baird and Aurelio Prifitera join APF Board of Trustees

APF welcomes two new members to its Board of Trustees:

• Brian Baird, PhD, who served for 12 years in the U.S. House of Representatives from Washington state, where he focused on science and technology, energy, health and mental health care, oceans, foreign policy, fiscal discipline and congressional integrity. Baird served as an honorary trustee of APF in 2011.

• Aurelio Prifitera, PhD, president and chief executive officer of clinical assessment/worldwide at Pearson Education. Prifitera previously served as a staff clinical psychologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, and as assistant professor of clinical psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Medical Center.

Grantee spotlight: Cultivating depression research

In 2003, Stewart Shankman PhD, received a $2,000 Clarence J. Rosecrans scholarship from APF to support his dissertation research. In it, he used EEGs to examine responses to reinforcement and motivation in people with depression.

Now an associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Shankman says the scholarship has been invaluable to his career and helped him "do the project that I wanted to do." He has published five peer-reviewed papers from the research and has received more than $450,000 in new funding directly attributable to the study APF funded, including a $400,000 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health.