Psychology Students' Association University of Toronto

Why volunteer for PSA? Volunteering provides you with an opportunity to work on projects that contribute to the welfare of all undergraduate psychology students, including yourselves. In the process you will make great friends and feel yourselves to be a part of a thriving community of interesting and interested individuals. Volunteering for PSA allows you to be more aware of what goes on in the psychology community around you — you will learn more about the courses offered, careers in psychology, psychology graduate school, events hosted by the psychology department, relevant events hosted by other departments and course unions, research and volunteering opportunities, job opportunities and much more. At the end of each academic year, we will happily provide you with a letter acknowledging your work with us.

There are many avenues through which you can become involved with the PSA. You can be involved in as few or as many ways as you like. You can be a mentor, an office hour holder, a class representative, a committee member, a newsletter team member, or you can start your own project and use the resources provided by PSA to reach your goal. To volunteer please print and fill out the respective sign-up sheet and drop it off at our office (SS 509). Alternatively, you may stop by our office to fill out the sign up sheet during our office hours. New volunteers are welcome all-year-round.

Involvement Forms:

Volunteer Online Application Form

Class Representative Online Application Form

Committee Sign-Up Sheet

Below you will find information about our office hour volunteers, our committees, our mentorship program and our newsletter team.

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Class Representative

Our top priority for recruiting volunteers is to recruit class representatives because they form a link between PSA and other psychology students, thus contributing to the building of a psych student community. Being a class rep requires a very small expenditure of time and provides a vital service to your fellow students and the PSA. It involves distributing newsletters and making announcements to keep the class updated on what is going on with PSA, the psychology department, and our campus. Also, you will talk to your classmates and try to determine if there are any issues with the course or if the course is great and PSA should recognize the efforts of the professor. Additionally, class representatives will organize study groups (if a study group is useful for that particular class). Finally, class reps might have to distribute and collect course evaluations at the end of term.

There are many benefits to being a class representative. You will meet lots of people and be part of the PSA community. You will get to practice public speaking and become known to your professors. You will experience a permanent warm glow form doing good deeds. Finally, you will obtain a letter of recognition at the end of the year. Please consider being a class representative as it is very important for the functioning of PSA.

If you would like to be a Class Representative, please email the  Volunteer Coordinators (Vince and Romeo): volunteer.psa@gmail.com.  Please list your name, class(es) you would like to represent, your email address, and phone number. They will email you back with further instructions. Thank you!

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Office Hour Holder

The office hour holders make up the core of the PSA volunteers. They make the functioning of PSA possible. As an office hour holder, you will spend an hour a week (minimum) volunteering at our office (SS509). During that hour you will work with other volunteers on large projects, which will be assigned monthly or weekly. For example, one of the projects might be to research graduate school programs offered by the universities in North America and to write a useful and comprehensive description of it (creating a database of graduate school info). Additionally, office hour holders will be welcoming to the visitors who drop by PSA office. They will provide them with information about PSA, sign out tests, sell merchandise, direct visitors to the appropriate resources, give advice, and write down any information pertaining to academic grievances (this information will be passed on to executives). If you are on a committee, you can choose to work on the committee work during your volunteer hour. We typically have 3+ volunteers for each office hour because we want to provide you with an opportunity to meet and make good friends with other psychology students. When you are not working on projects, you can play board games, watch videos, or just hang out. Our office is open from 10 am to 6 pm Monday to Friday so that means there are about 200 spots open for volunteering at the office. With approximately 200 hours of volunteering per week there is much that we can accomplish! Being involved with PSA you will have much impact on the direction and goals of the organization. We will be asking for your input and opinions on a regular basis. Volunteers are welcome to come up with ideas for projects or start projects of their own — PSA will give you the resources. Please consider joining PSA as an office hour holder and work with us to improve your education and the overall undergraduate experience.

Reference Letter Criteria:
1. At least 12 hours of volunteering (Hours in helping out events are counted)
2. Email volunteer.psa@gmail.com at the end of the semester for confirmation
3. Volunteers cannot miss more than 3 of their designated office hours

The PSA volunteer duties can be downloaded in the following link: Volunteer Duties 2012

The PSA volunteer login system user guide can be downloaded in the following link:

Volunteer Login System User Guide

To become a volunteer please fill out a volunteer sign-up sheet and e-mail:
Volunteer Coordinators (Vince and Romeo): volunteer.psa@gmail.com

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Newsletter Team

This year we are looking to start up a newsletter, and perhaps later on in the year expand it to a newspaper. For this we will need a team of dedicated and creative individuals. There will be many positions on the team since putting together a high-quality newsletter requires a lot of work. We will need a chief-editor, design editor, lay-out editor, copy editor, research manager, article contributors, interviewers… and more. We are hoping that this will not only be a valuable contribution to the undergraduate psychology community, but also a great experience for the volunteers involved. There is no set format for the newsletter yet, so volunteers would have a chance to experiment and try out their own ideas… in essence, taking responsibility for the outcome of the project. The newsletter team would be under supervision from the Co-presidents and letters of recognition would be given to all those who volunteer. We hope that you will see this as an opportunity for personal development, opportunity to meet ambitious and interesting individuals as well as a chance to build a stronger community.

If you are interested in joining the Newsletter Team, please email us at psa.copres@gmail.com with the subject line: Join Newsletter Team. In the email tell us about yourself and tell us whether you have a job preference.

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Mentorship Program

The Mentor Program is a very exciting initiative for this year! We are looking for caring 3rd and 4th year students who are willing to share their extensive knowledge and wisdom with 1st, 2nd and 3rd year psychology students. We believe that guidance provided by upper year students can be very valuable to younger students. As most of our initiatives, the secondary goal of this program is to build a stronger psychology student community. We believe that this program will be beneficial for everyone involved. Mentors can help out their mentees with content material from classes, tell them about their own experiences in the psychology program, as well as provide them with useful tips about university life. Subsequently, mentees will benefit from the valuable guidance and expertise from their mentors. Providing guidance builds character and allows one to experience a sense of responsibility. Furthermore it deepens your ability to care for and understand the needs of others. We sincerely hope that you consider joining our mentorship program.

For mentors:

To become a mentor please email psa.academic@gmail.com with the subject line: Mentorship Program – Mentor. Say what year you are in and what program — if specialist: what 2 seminar courses are you taking/planning to take, if major: 2 favorite 3/4th year class taking/taken what you are studying and why you are interested in mentoring.

For mentees:

To become a mentee please email psa.academic@gmail.com with the subject line: Mentorship Program – Mentee. Please tell us what year, which major you are in or want to be in -> minor/major/specialist/undecided, most interested in which 2 of the following: (developmental, social, personality, abnormal, learning &memory, cognitive, psychobiology)

Also, depending on the numbers of applicants, we won’t be able to start (or at least very slowly) the program until we get our committee established.

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Committee Member

Being a part of a committee is a great way to meet other psychology students, plan events to assist others, and to have fun. Just e-mail the committee leaders to join and fill out a Commitee sign-up sheet in our office. Committee leaders’ email addresses are also available here. The following are short descriptions of each committee.

Seminar Committee [More Information]

Leader(s): Seminar Coordinators:

Katherine (chaerim10@hotmail.com) and

Stephanie (stephaniekwan915@gmail.com)

• Introduce psych students to the association
• Provide orientation to all interested volunteers at the beginning of each term
• Seek out collaborative opportunities for PSA around campus & community
• Act as liaison between PSA and university officials
• Help plan seminars concerning graduate school admissions, future career paths, the GREs, as well as researching and writing psychology essays

Promotion Committee [More Information]
Leader(s): Promotions Coordinator:

Melda (melda_esendal@yahoo.com)

• Promoting PSA events through posters, advertisements etc.

Social Committee [More Information]
Leader(s): Social Convenors:

Tina (tinakc.chen@utoronto.ca) and Daniel (danny.liu@utoronto.ca)

• Organize social events such as movie nights, pubs and the annual Wine and Cheese

Academic Committee [More Information]
Leader(s): Academic Coordinators:

Jon and Diana (psa.academic@gmail.com)

• Putting together and selling test review packages
• Running the mentorship program
• Planning Graduate Student Q&A, and Dr. Freud competition