Cross-Campus Psychology Conference Doubles in Size

When a psychology honor society chapter at Claremont Graduate University set out this year to grow its annual student research symposium, organizers didn’t just add a few more presentations. They turned it into the 7 C’s Psychology Conference, a daylong, five-campus event that drew about 40 presenters and roughly 150 RSVPs — more than triple the turnout of the previous year’s gathering. 

The conference, held at McKenna Auditorium on the Claremont McKenna College campus, brought together undergraduate and graduate students from Claremont Graduate University, Claremont McKenna College, Pomona College, Pitzer College, and Scripps College to present psychology research through poster sessions, oral presentations, and shorter “data blitz” talks.  

For many of the students involved, it was their first experience presenting research at an academic conference.   

From a Small Symposium to a Five-Campus Event 

Hundgen, president of the CGU chapter of Psi Chi, the international psychology honor society, said the chapter has long hosted events aimed at building community within the psychology program and connecting students with research opportunities. In previous years, that effort took the form of a smaller symposium featuring mostly CGU students, with occasional participation from other Claremont Colleges. Last year’s symposium drew about 100 attendees and 15 presentations, an improvement over earlier years, according to Hundgen. 

This year, Hundgen, who is a fourth-year PhD student focusing on Environmental Psychology, worked with Jason Bao, a CMC undergraduate who had taken a CGU course where Hundgen served as teaching assistant, to expand the event. The two organizers secured about $3,200 in funding from sources across the consortium, including CGU’s Blaze Fund, the CMC Psychology Department, Pomona’s psychology and neuroscience department, the Kravis Leadership Institute, and the Berger Institute, along with contributions from Scripps and Pitzer. 

Bao, a junior at Claremont McKenna College, didn’t realize all the moving parts involved in organizing a conference. Despite feeling overwhelmed by the logistics at times, Bao said he was able to line up A/V support, financing, a location and planning help from other departments across campus. 

“I really enjoyed receiving tons of support from the logistics side,” Bao said.   

Undergraduate and Graduate Research, Side by Side 

The expanded conference featured two poster sessions and two oral and data-blitz presentation sessions, along with a keynote address from Wei-Chin Wong, a CMC professor specializing in clinical and cross-cultural psychology, who spoke about his path into the field. Faculty members from multiple campuses attended alongside students, and four awards totaling $750 were presented, including a People’s Choice Award and prizes for the top oral and data-blitz presentations. 

For Cole Bosch, a Claremont Graduate University Ph.D. student in positive developmental psychology, the conference marked a personal milestone: his first academic poster presentation. Bosch, who is starting his fourth year of graduate school after earning a master’s degree, presented findings from a secondary data analysis of survey responses collected during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“I found that people who were trying to learn new skills during COVID were actually physically and psychologically healthier than those who weren’t,” Bosch said. He said the research suggests that actively pursuing learning and new hobbies may help buffer against the mental and physical health strain of large-scale social disruptions like the pandemic. 

His poster earned the conference’s Best Poster award. He also presented the same research at the California Well-Being Conference at UC Riverside. 

Building Connections Across Academic Levels 

Beyond the awards, both Hundgen and Bosch pointed to the conference’s cross-level structure — undergraduates and graduate students presenting side by side — as its most distinctive feature. 

“I was kind of blown away by how much awesome psychology research is happening outside of CGU,” Bosch said, noting he had not previously been connected to the undergraduate research happening at CMC and Pomona.  

“It’s pretty cool when you have one conference where everybody across all different levels of academia is presenting together.” 

Bosch said most academic conferences tend to be siloed by academic level, with separate events for undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty. The 7 C’s Psychology Conference gave him the chance to offer feedback to undergraduate presenters based on his own research experience, while also drawing inspiration from their ideas. 

Hundgen said that dynamic was intentional, designed in part to give students — many of them presenting for the first time — a lower-stakes environment to learn what sharing research is like before attending larger, unfamiliar conferences. 

“The point was to have this kind of safe space where people could realize what sharing research is like and figure out, as they’re starting their research career and whether this is something they’re interested in doing,” Hundgen said.