What is SIPPS?

I started SIPPS (Summer Internship in Psychological Sciences) in the summer of 2020 right as the pandemic hit, as a way to formalize training for undergraduates who were supposed to train with me that summer (if it wasn’t for the COVID-19 outbreak). The goal of SIPPS was to equip students with tangible research skills, while also giving them hands-on mentorship through an independent research project, all in a low-stakes environment. As part of the program, we held 3 workshops/week — coding in R, general research skills, and alternating journal club/professional development. Students presented their research projects at an end of the summer SIPPS conference.

The program started with about 10 RAs — in 2021, we expanded the program to include dozens of graduate student instructors and mentors and over 60 student participants from all around the world. With an amazing organizing team of Columbia graduate students, we ran a successful program in 2022 for undergraduates at Columbia University who had little to no prior research experience.

For detailed information about the motivation of the program, all of the program components (including tons of recordings and materials), and for info on the many wonderful people involved, please visit our website (thanks to Camille Gasser for creating this!) here.