Earlier this month, at the Canadian Psychological Association’s 78th National Convention in Toronto, the University of Waterloo’s Clinical Psychology students were a strong presence. Our students were involved in 9 posters and 3 talks during the three days of the convention at the Fairmont Royal York. In reflecting on his presentation, Kevin Capobianco (above) said "I was pleased to chat to a few folks at the poster session, the amount of overlap between my area of research and the projects around me was surprising". This sentiment was echoed by Jessica Dupasquier in her reflections after her self-compassion presentation, who shared she “was happy to get to chat with other Canadian researchers interested in this exploding topic of research.”
For many of our students, they also to experience other related research. Alex Milovanov (above) described how “I enjoyed the conference as an opportunity to discuss my research with a fair number of people, to see some interesting presentations, and to meet with friends from various universities.” Similarly, Katie Finch (below) reported that the national convention “was a great opportunity to present some of the research from my lab and attend symposium presentations and talks relevant to my professional development."
More than allowing others to see the great work done by our students in their research at the university, it also allowed our students other opportunities. As described by Kira Vimalakanthan “I think it was refreshing to see how versatile and useful our profession is in so many different industries and environments. It was amazing to see that diversity on display at the conference.” The diversity of these learning opportunities was well described by Nick Zabara (below) who said “you can learn about neuroimaging for Alzheimer's in the morning and do a workshop on mindfulness for CBT in the afternoon!”
The student convention experience was summed up well by Mahsa Sadeghi (below) who explained “It was a great opportunity to network!”
A special congratulations should go out to the CMHR Executive Director, Dr. David Moscovitch, who was the CPA Clinical Psychology Section’s Featured Speaker at this year’s convention. His talk, entitled “Understanding and treating social anxiety disorder: Fresh insights bring new challenges”, was one of the highlights of the Clinical Psychology Sections presentations this year.
