I-O Psychology Newsletter Spring 2025
Program Director Note
Dear Alumni,
Greetings from chilly and windy Ohio! It’s been a little while since our last newsletter, and I’m excited to reconnect with all of you. As we reflect on the past few years, we’re reminded of the resilience and strength of the BGSU I-O community. Despite the challenges we’ve faced, there is much to celebrate. Innovative research and community partnerships continued to thrive, and we welcomed three new cohorts of talented doctoral students (and are actively recruiting another!). We are also all anxiously awaiting the final announcement for Dr. Melissa Keith achieving tenure—an exciting milestone for our department.
Over the past few years, we’ve had the chance to reconnect with many of you, whether through in-person events or virtual gatherings, and we are continually grateful for your continued engagement. In fact, a recent reconnection with alumni Dr. Corey Seitz has led to a new initiative aimed at strengthening our connections: the Alumni Mentoring Program. This program offers an opportunity for you to mentor current students, share your insights, and help guide the next generation of scholars and professionals. Whether you’re looking to offer career advice, share your expertise, or simply stay connected, this program is a wonderful way to give back to the BGSU community. If you are interested in participating or would like more information, please email me at cbarrat@bgsu.edu.
As always, we would love to hear about your recent successes and milestones. Please feel free to email me with updates you’d like to share with the BGSU community. Thank you for being an integral part of the BGSU family, and we look forward to staying connected in the years ahead.
Warm regards,
Clare Barratt
Director, I-O Doctoral Program
IPRA Report
The Institute for Psychological Research and Application (IPRA) continues to work hard and remains dedicated to helping organizations, big and small, by applying the collective talents of our program to solve problems. I thought I would share several recent and current projects as part of this update. We completed a project with Owens Corning last Summer that involved helping them reduce testing time while maintaining the validity of their selection process. The project involved analyzing large amounts of data to help determine incremental validity of various tests. Given that Owens Corning is based out of Toledo, students loved visiting the corporate headquarters of a Fortune 500 company and taking pictures with the corporate mascot, the Pink Panther.
We completed projects with several local governments as well. With Lucas County Human Resources, we helped them evaluate a performance management intervention by conducting focus groups with affected employees and providing best practices recommendations. With the City of Gahanna (a growing suburb of Columbus), we have continued work on developing hiring tests for a wide variety of jobs, helping them with hiring important positions throughout their community. And more recently, we began a multi-year project with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), helping them evaluate a tool designed to make workplaces more friendly to aging workers. This program is designed to target small manufacturing companies, particularly in the Midwest, that are struggling to hire and retain employees. The idea is that by using this NIOSH-designed tool, organizations may be able to make small changes to the workplace to help attract and retain older workers.
Our program has always taken pride in offering our doctoral students applied experiences through what we consider an innovative approach. This program also fits with our university’s mission promoted by President Rodney Rogers, that BGSU is a “public university for the public good.” For the upcoming SIOP conference in Denver, we (under the leadership of IPRA Assistant Director Aarti Polavarapu) will be bringing other universities together in an alternative session to share ideas and best practices on how to do such work. We feel like we have a lot to brag about, but also a lot to learn. With this session, our aim is to promote ways to synergize efforts and provide toolkits for supporting such collaborations between academia and industry and we aim to turn the findings of this session into a focal article for the Industrial and Organizational Psychology (IOP) journal.
Students are always hungry for more projects and so, if your organization can use our help, please let me know. We continue to use monies raised by IPRA projects to support student and faculty research and travel. Our students use IPRA points to help pay for travel to SIOP as well as to pay for thesis and dissertation projects (often using the money to pay for Prolific or mTurk participants). We love projects that involve alumni!
Student Highlights
First Year Students
Jung Zheng
"I have been in Bowling Green for about a month, and everything feels great so far. The inclusive and friendly environment here has made my transition from undergraduate to graduate student much smoother than I expected. As an international student, I especially appreciate the convenience of being just an hour away from a major international airport, which is a significant improvement compared to my undergraduate experience. I look forward to the rest of my journey here at BGSU!"
Hannah Thomson
“In the limited time I have been here I already feel integrated into the department. My many questions are always answered without judgement, and I have already had numerous opportunities to broaden my research curiosities and experiences. I am eager to continue building relationships with my colleagues and learning more about I-O Psychology.”
Searra Lippard
"While I am just starting the program, I already feel a sense of belonging and community. The faculty and other graduate students have been incredibly welcoming, and it has been inspiring to see how much everyone celebrates each other’s accomplishments. The program is highly collaborative and there are so many opportunities to get involved starting day one (such as the Speaker Series and various research groups). I can’t wait to see where this journey takes me!"
Second Year Students
Sarah Rohr
“My time at BGSU thus far has been nothing short of amazing! I have had the opportunity to connect with so many incredible people, including an awesome cohort and top-notch faculty! The entire department has been so intentional about bringing us into the fold, and it's been a really special thing to be a part of so far.”
Alisha Silkey DeBuse
“I have really enjoyed my first year and a half at BGSU. I feel a sense of community and have developed strong friendships through the program. My advisor, Melissa Keith, has been tremendous, and I have felt the freedom to take on research projects that pique my interest and align with my passions.”
Lindsay Denecker
“Coming from glorious desert heat and sunshine, I was a little leery of returning to the Midwest winters, but I am happy to say that I love living in Bowling Green so far! BG is beautiful and I like that I can walk to campus and downtown. Most importantly, though, having experienced my first year in the program (and now into my second year), I can confidently say that I enjoy the work I'm doing and the people I'm doing it with.”
Barbara Warner
“As a second-year student at BGSU, I can confidently say that I feel as though I am immersed in the program. There have been many opportunities to get involved in both research and applied experiences, developing many different skills. I am very grateful for the connections I have made with my cohort, fellow students, and the faculty. I am excited to continue my graduate experience at BGSU!”
Melissa Sorensen
"My year and a half in Bowling Green has flown by. Growing up in a small town in Indiana similar in size to Bowling Green, coming to BGSU has truly felt like a home away from home. It’s now rare that I don’t run into someone I know when I’m out and about in BG or Perrysburg. I’m incredibly thankful to be part of such a caring and supportive group of students in the IO program at BGSU. I’m excited to continue growing as a researcher during my time in graduate school. If you’re looking for me, I’m most likely enjoying an iced vanilla latte at Flatlands or The Flying Joe."
Updated: 04/09/2025 11:24AM