Winter School 2023
The Applied Social Psychology master's program day was held as part of the Winter School for Psychology on February 13, 2023.
Every year a group of ambitious and talented applicants begins to get acquainted with the Psychology Department of HSE. This year was no exception. The opening of the Winter School of Psychology was awarded to the master's program "Applied Social Psychology". A rich program awaited the participants: a lecture by Alexander Nikolayevich Tatarko, the academic director of the program; an interactive journey, prepared by the staff of the Center for Sociocultural Research, into the scientific and practical life of CSCR; and an hour by Albina Galyamova, a master's student, who held a lecture-discussion on dysgenia.
Thus, during lecture, Alexander Nikolayevich introduced the participants of the school to the history of the emergence, structure and content of the master's program "Applied social psychology. Special attention was paid to the changes that were adopted in 2023. First of all, this is the online format and teaching in Russian. The lecture ended with a Q&A session from the Winter School participants who were interested in how to prepare a high-quality project proposal for their research and the prospects that await them after graduation from the Master's program.
The second part of the event introduced the participants of the Winter School to an integral part of the "Applied Social Psychology" master's program - the Center for Sociocultural Research. School participants with special interest attended a space excursion into the scientific and practical life of the CSCR. The staff of the Center prepared for the school participants a space journey through the universe of "atypical" social psychologists. During the interactive journey, participants learned how they can develop in the program, build an academic and practical career, as well as learned about the main activities and directions of work of the Center. Such an interactive format left no one indifferent. Creators of the Psychological Universe shared their experience and smart tricks that will help to overcome any difficulties on the way to the desired goals and stars.
The journey consisted of individual stations, where participants learned about different aspects of life and work at the Center, from writing articles to scientific conferences and expeditions in Russia.
The first station, for example, was devoted to a single track "Master's Degree - Graduate School. First-year Applied Social Psychology student Maria Dzyubenko and graduate student Asya Karimova not only talked about their experiences, but also prepared for participants the tips on how to write a good project proposal, which will be needed both for admission to graduate school and for admission to the United Track. School participants were excited and grateful!
Next, Maria Bultseva, mentor and instructor at the master's program, talked about how Applied Social Psychology students are supported and helped through all the challenges.
And Catherine Bushina, a senior researcher and instructor in the MP program, oriented how you can get involved in the Center's research projects and become an intern researcher.
Hermogen Rodionov, gladly shared his experience in writing scientific articles and drew attention to important aspects of selecting a journal and passing the Assessment of Publication Activity (APA). The participants of the Winter School also learned about the scientific events of the CSCI - the international conference "Culture in Society, Between Groups and Across Generations", research seminars "Culture Matters", Summer Schools and Expeditions "Discovering Russia anew", and learned where to find information about them. The space voyage with CSCI ended at the station of Victoria Galyapina, who introduced the bright scientific "stars" of the Center, among whom were Lebedeva Nadezhda Mikhailovna, John Berry, Shalom Schwartz, Fons van de Wijver and others. After that the participants of the school created their own star maps and singled out the most interesting spheres of activity for themselves. This interactive assignment proved to be to the participants' liking and soon many interesting constellations appeared on the star map! Vasilyeva Ekaterina, the teacher of the master's program, summed up the trip:
"Thank you very much to everyone who took part in our meeting and who showed us their new constellations! I really hope that your new stars will shine here at our program. After all, if stars are lit, it means that someone needs them. So someone wants them to be? We really want them to be. Stay with us. We look forward to seeing you at our master's program and at the Center for Sociocultural Studies!"
Well, the third part of the Applied Social Psychology day ended with a lecture by Albina Galyamova "The flowering of civilization or decline due to intellectual dysgenia. Albina moderated several rounds of scientific discussions about this phenomenon. Participants broke into teams, found arguments, asked questions, learned about the ethical aspects of this phenomenon and formulated their own scientific hypotheses! The last part of the discussion was especially vivid and memorable, where bold scientific hypotheses were made and ethical issues related to the topic of the discussion were formulated.
The organizers and participants also shared their impressions:
"The burning eyes and words of gratitude from the Winter School participants are a great pleasure. As one of the organizers, I was especially pleased to understand that the participants liked everything and, most importantly, everything was useful! We had a very lively group this year, they asked a lot of questions and were generally quite motivated. I hope to see many of these participants as students of our MP" - graduate student Asya Karimova.
"This was my first time participating not only as an organizer of the Winter School, but also as a speaker. I had exceptionally positive impressions, as all participants were active and were not afraid to express their most daring ideas. It was interesting to observe how the participants analyzed the proposed problem from different angles. I hope that in the future I will be able to see the participants already in our Master's program" - Albina Galliamova, a 2nd year student of the Applied Social Psychology program.
Thus, we can say that the participants of the Winter School had a very useful time: they got to know about the program from the first hands, namely to get acquainted with the scientific department - Center for Sociocultural Research and to see the possibilities of their realization within the Center as well as to be involved into scientific discussions of an interesting social-psychological topic. We hope that this bright and saturated day, will remain in memory of participants of Winter School and we will surely meet with them soon!