Psychology major Della Drummond is one of 14 students from Cerritos College to have been chosen to attend the Western Psychological Association Conference from April 25-28, and sees this as an opportunity to network with her peers and attend workshops.

“(There are) a bunch of one hour or two hour workshops where you can go and take this two hour intensive (lecture) specifically about statistics or about positive psychology. Or about the different aspects of the different things going on in psychology today,” she said.

The students selected will be giving presentations on their own research work that they have been working on for the past semester.

WPA will host students from schools throughout the west coast, and Drummond feels this will make it easier to network.

“It’s more likely that you’re going to run into peers and colleagues … because they work in the same geographical area.”

This is Drummond’s first time at the conference along with Psychology Club President Monique Razo.

There are eight different projects being presented by Cerritos College students at the conference, students have worked in groups from four to six people to complete these research projects.

Drummond explained that there are three different types of research to be done for the conference, students can present a social psychology project, a research methods project or a directed studies project.

It is about a semester long process to get the projects done the students attend a three hour class, two days a week but also work on the project during other hours.

“I would say my whole last semester was spent doing research projects I had other classes … but all I could think about was my research, ” Razo said.

Cerritos College is among very few other community colleges to attend WPA, it will be filled mostly grad students.

Drummond hopes that through this experience, she will meet professors and students from four year universities and when it is time for her to transfer she will stand out among the other students applying.

“Having conducted research, and having had that research accepted for presentation at WPA or APA is a really big deal, it makes our students really competitive (for transfer),” Drummond said.