Leslie Ashburn-Nardo is an associate professor of psychology at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) and director of the Applied Social and Organizational Psychology doctoral program and the Industrial/Organizational Psychology master’s program. SPSP recently chatted with Leslie about IUPUI’s new doctoral program in Applied Social and Organizational Psychology. Programs like this are essential as they help support the mission of SPSP in advancing the science, teaching, and application of social and personality psychology.

Tell us about your new doctoral program.

Our doctoral program in Applied Social and Organizational Psychology (ASOP) trains researchers and practitioners to address societal and organizational issues using theories and methods from social and industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology. We offer a unique focus on Diversity Science. Drawing from social psychology, students gain content knowledge in attitudes and social cognition, stereotyping and prejudice, stigma, and diversity and intergroup relations. In addition, we provide students with the foundational content of I/O psychology, including staffing, human resources and organizational development, and organizational psychology (e.g., work motivation, leadership, and group performance). We are now in our second year of offering the ASOP degree at IUPUI, with five students currently enrolled.

Why the combination of social and I/O psychology?

From a practical perspective, ASOP best reflects the expertise of our faculty. We currently have two full-time faculty (Eva Pietri and me) with training in classic, experimental social psychology, and three full-time faculty (Jane Williams, Dennis Devine, and Peggy Stockdale) with training in I/O psychology. We are currently in the process of recruiting a fourth I/O psychologist to join ASOP next year. Despite our different training orientations, there’s a lot of crossover in both directions. Eva and I use social psychology to address biases in STEM education, industry, and healthcare; hence, the applied social in ASOP. Likewise, Jane, Dennis, and Peggy often draw from social psychology theories to guide their research in employee feedback-seeking, jury and team decision-making, and sexual harassment. From a theoretical perspective, we see a lot more blurring of lines across many psychology sub-disciplines, so, for us, developing ASOP was a natural consequence of who we are and what the field is becoming.

Why should students consider this program?

Our program follows the scientist-practitioner model, meaning we believe the best real-world decisions are informed by theory and data (and conversely, some of the most interesting and important research is inspired by real-world problems). So, in addition to having the unique knowledge base of both social and I/O psychology, our students will graduate with rigorous mentored research experience and coursework in statistics, measurement, and methods. We believe this will make our graduates competitive for a wider range of research, teaching, and industry positions than more narrowly focused training programs. Our concentration in Diversity Science will further distinguish our graduates and help prepare them for an increasingly diverse workforce. We foresee graduates in positions ranging from academia (including social, I/O, and organizational behavior programs), research, human resources training and development, to diversity and talent management.