Good tidings, all! If you haven’t been on campus, there are multiple construction zones between our building and the Village. We are constantly dodging equipment to get anywhere. This stage of beautification should be done by Fall 2026, leaving us with a new hotel among other spaces.

Internal changes include a new face, and others moving in different circles. In this issue you will learn about our new colleague in social psychology, Dr. Andrew White. You may already be familiar with Dr. Nick Lee’s move to Associate Director of the practicum clinic. And, finally, we have two full time non-tenure line faculty with us this year. Dr. Alan Maugherman is an alum of the doctoral program (and the clinical psych master’s program in PSYS), and Dr. Thomas Gretton is an alum of the Sport Psych and CMH master’s programs. Between these two, and Drs. Cipriano, Lee and Ægisdóttir, we are surrounded by alums during faculty meetings this year.

By the time you see this, it is likely the Psychology Good Deeds Day will have passed. Scheduled for October 8th, the goal is to have members of the psychology community do one good thing for someone else on that day. The Chair of the Psychology Department at the University of Maryland proposed the idea to the organization of psychology chairs, and at last count 75 departments around the world had joined in. Each department designed their own thing. I am pleased to say that all of the academic psychology units at BSU joined in; we are asking folks to demonstrate a random act of kindness and leave a post-it note for someone that day. In fact, doing something that WEEK, or even throughout the month of October, sounds like a plan to me. If you are looking for ideas, also check out this page: https://www.randomactsofkindness.org

There are plenty of other things, events or situations I could talk about, but I am going to end this here. I tend to end my letters (yes, I write actual letters!) with a quote:

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.

Helen Keller