Looking back on 2018… and forward to 2019

This year was jam-packed with excitement! Some of my highlights of 2018 are shared below.

I got my first two publications!

In a Survey Methods class in 2015, three other students and I did a survey project creating a scale measuring aesthetic experiences, or the experiences one has when viewing art. We built this scale based on a book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called The Art of Seeing, which is based on his work on the flow experience. After three years (desk rejection in May 2017, resubmission to another journal in February 2018), it was finally accepted for publication in the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts in August 2018! Even more exciting, about two weeks after it was posted online first, we got an email from the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics asking us to present in their symposium on flow in Frankfurt, Germany! I am excited to be representing my colleague Kelsey Procter Finley to present our latest research on aesthetic experiences and well-being.Our second publication was accepted at the American Journal of Evaluation and should hopefully be online first in January! This publication is with Natalie Jones, Dr. Tarek Azzam, and fellow CGU colleagues looking at applying data visualization principles to logic models in evaluation. Our second publication on the role of titles in data visualization is currently being written up and will hopefully be published mid-2019.Relatedly, I also had another paper rejected that I decided to put in the file drawer (aka on PsyArXiv!) and was a journal reviewer for both American Journal of Evaluation and the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation.

My dissertation is finally about to start!

We submitted a research grant letter of intent to the William T. Grant Foundation in January, got invited to submit a full proposal in February, had my review paper for my dissertation accepted in February, had my oral exams in May right before submitting the WTGrant Foundation proposal, and was asked to revise and resubmit the grant in August. Ultimately, I decided to decline resubmission so I could graduate. I got my dissertation proposal accepted in November and have been doing cognitive interviews for the past month. I will be starting data collection in the new year and walking in May!

I started teaching… and I accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Psychology at University of Wisconsin Stout!

This past year I decided I was interested in going into academia. So when an opportunity to teach opened up, I took it! In the fall semester, I began teaching for the first time. I taught Elements of Professional Communication at CSU Fullerton in the Child and Adolescent Studies Department. It was a pretty intense course, and I learned a lot. I’m excited to be teaching a practicum course next semester.I also applied to four schools who had positions with relevance to evaluation. I felt very fortunate how many positions were open that were evaluation-related this academic season. I never heard back from two schools (apparently one said my application was late?!), but UWStout moved quickly (applied 10/16, telephone interview 11/4, job talk 11/27, job offer 12/12) and I ultimately decided to accept the job. The other school who was interested in me contacted me two days after the job offer from UWStout asking me to come mid-January to do the job talk, but I decided to stick with UWStout. I am incredibly excited about this opportunity!

I tracked my life.

This year, I decided to track a variety of things. It was a bit hard sometimes to remember to write things down, but I am so glad I did it. For a while I decided to also track my hours, particularly when life got incredibly busy, but I am not sure I want to continue that. Anyways, some of my numbers this year:

• I did strength training 169 days.
• I did spin class 38 times and yoga class 8 times (can you tell which I prefer?).
• I ran 24 times; 6 of those were this month when I decided to start up C25K again.
• I read a ton. I processed 392 articles (some I read in depth, others I just skimmed or read the abstracts) and I read 61 books.
• I wrote 23 blog posts!

One thing that was nice about tracking this way, and especially tracking by month, was being able to see how my life got way too busy at some points in my life. I took on way too much this fall semester and my workouts, reading, and blog suffered because of it.

My goals and projects for 2019.

I find it difficult to think so far ahead, as I prefer to set my goals quarterly, but here are some of my goals and projects for this year.

1. Continue teaching and prepare for my new position at UWStout in the fall! I am teaching practicum this spring at CSU Fullerton and then will be teaching foundations of evaluation, statistics, and general psychology at UWStout.
2. Finish my dissertation. I let go of a lot of my projects so I can focus on this in the spring and graduate!
3. Continue working on my various evaluation projects. Most of them I’ll be wrapping up in the spring/summer as I transition to my new job.
4. Continue working on my various research projects. Here’s the papers I anticipate we submit for publication in 2019: follow-up study on aesthetic experiences, the role of politics in evaluation, how titles affect data visualizations, the role of non-cognitive factors in academic performance, perceptions of how evaluation and research differ, and papers on my thesis and dissertation.