By Andres De Los Reyes, PhD, Future Directions Forum Founder & Chair

I think a lot about learning. I find that I get a lot of practice creating learning opportunities on campus at the University of Maryland (Go Terps!). But, I also know that as an institution of higher learning, campuses like my own want me to focus on creating learning opportunities about content—about “the curriculum.” Don’t get me wrong, that’s an important space to cover! It’s also not the only space that needs coverage. We all know that when it comes to research, the curriculum doesn’t reveal the whole story. We also need to build skills to do our jobs, and to learn how to do our jobs in a healthy way. If these skills don’t get covered in class, then they are, at best, provided in a “hidden curriculum” to which only a few privileged folks have access. That’s why the Future Directions Forum exists!

At the Future Directions Forum, we have a conceptual framework for the hidden curriculum that we call Casual Mentoring. My colleague and friend Lucina Uddin and I described the framework a few years ago in a paper in Trends in Cognitive Sciences. Basically, we get some of the hidden curriculum passed down to us by members of our “research families” and in particular, our mentors. Of course, no mentor is perfect. Maybe you are looking for a job, but your mentor hasn’t been on the market in decades. Or, you want to learn a new technique for a project you’re working on, but your mentor doesn’t know it, and you don’t know anyone who does. Perhaps you just want to talk about something sensitive (e.g., career plans) and you want advice from someone who maybe has a perspective that your mentor does not share. Each year, the Future Directions Forum recruits a stellar group of scholars who serve as casual mentors for our attendees. This Professional Development Team prepares an innovative array of workshops, addresses, and small-group and one-on-one consultations that cover hidden curriculum topics, and in a way that caters to not only those who want to “get to know” a topic, but also have specific questions about it and wish to meet one-on-one to talk some more. Interested in learning about programming for 2024, including the titles and learning objectives of our workshops? Then click on this link!

OK, now let’s talk about your work. Maybe you have presented at conferences before or maybe the Future Directions Forum will be your first time presenting. In either case, at the Future Directions Forum we “ruin” presenting at conferences for you, but in a good way. Our poster session, the Forum Science Social, is an exclusive slot on our programming. Nothing else is going on when we hold it. There’s free food so people show up. And, get this, 100% digital. That’s right. No poster tube. Leave it at home. The session feels like a mashup between the talk you give at a symposium and showing your poster in the wing of a museum. There’s a buzz during the session because everyone is engaged, and the poster session “slots” change every 15-20 minutes using Powerpoint’s timed slideshow feature. Poster presenters even do neat things with the presentations, like have their figures and tables scroll through via GIF (i.e., one space on poster for all images and tables) or include 3D rendering of figures or images.

While we are on the topic of talking about your work, here’s a neat thing we rolled out last year, our Talks-to-Tales Series! If you know me, then you know that I “heart” storytelling. So, we have an option for presenting your work orally at the meeting, and it’s a mix of you letting the audience know what you are up to in terms of works in progress, and the audience giving you advice on the “story” behind your work. Maybe you presented your work at a recent conference, and now you are looking to prepare a manuscript and submit it for publication. Or, you are looking to do the same thing, but treat the work as pilot data for a grant submission. Perhaps you are going on the market soon or going up for tenure next year. In each of those cases, you must tell a compelling story about your work. To get the paper published. To get the grant funded. To get the job but also keep the job. The Talks-to-Tales Series is about you telling us what you are working on, and members of our Professional Development Team working with the audience to “crowdsource” advice on your storytelling! The talks are short (5-10 minutes), and they each get a 30-minute slot on our schedule. The crowd is both intimate in size and supportive in their approach to feedback (think: rehearsal dinner for the wedding). After the talk, the audience spends roughly 20 minutes reacting to your story and ways to improve it!

Learn more about submitting an abstract for our Forum Science Social!

Learn more about submitting an abstract for our Talks-to-Tales Series!

Deadline for both of our Calls for Abstracts is Friday, April 5th—and registration opens that same day. 

Are you excited to attend? I am excited to see you! After all, your work is another neat excuse for me to learn about what’s in store for the future of research in mental health!