FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Chapter Frequently Asked Questions
Joining As a New Chapter
What do I need to do to join?
All details can be found in our 'How To Start A New Chapter' page!
In short: submit an application; send us your member roster and constitution; stay in touch!
Do we need to change our name? Are there membership dues?
No and No!
Keep your structure, name, history, and protocols if they’ve worked for you! Reach out to us if they haven’t and you want suggestions.
What can you do for us? How does MSPA relate to chapters? What IS MSPA?
A brief history:
MSPA was founded in 2018 to be a national LGBTQIA+ medical student group, much the way that SNMA, LMSA or APAMSA function for their communities. We are entirely run by medical student and pre-medical student volunteers. Despite no regular financial or administrative support, we have grown to a highly organized structure, solidified non-profit status, coordinated national campaigns, finished an enormous research study, and spread to ~36 states and Puerto Rico across the country.
What we currently are:
At this moment, we aim to be a hub: to connect medical student LGBTQIA+ advocates and groups across every medical school, via organized mailing list and Slack channel. This allows us to coordinate national responses, connect students to one another, share accomplishments and research, and strengthen an enormous community. We’ll add you to a Slack channel and mailing list with easy engagement between schools and an ever-growing community!
At the same time, we host educational and networking events and build resource banks of educational resources, advocacy tools, templates and event ideas - partially from your suggestions and needs! This is slow work sometimes - we believe strongly in quality over quantity - but we hope that along with your involvement and creativity, we’ll build a large and easily accessible drive of resources so that it never falls on one lone advocate. You’ll be connected to a Google Drive that only chapters have access to, where you can both share your own resources, and exchange with others!
Support smaller or new chapters with the legitimacy of being a national organization. At institutions where students have received opposition to forming an LGBTQIA+ group, we hope that our status as a national, non-profit organization will help you advocate for forming an MSPA chapter.
Showcasing your work and accomplishments. We’re here to be your cheerleader! Advocacy work and community building can often be thankless - you don’t do it for recognition, but we still think you deserve it for your work. Spent hours putting on an event you developed? We want to share it via our networks! Published something recently? Got an award? Passed that block? Never feel shy in letting us know!
Additionally, April 2022 will offer the inaugural MSPA Conference! A place for our members network and present and showcase their work in policy and academic research!
Connecting students with mentors. MSPA works to connect pre-medical students with current medical students for mentorship as they prepare to enter this exciting part of their career. Additionally, we connect medical students to current residents for mentorship. The goal is to ensure our members have access to guidance in not only fields of their interest, but from mentors who share in the lived experience and understanding of being a queer medical trainee.
What we are not:
We do not yet have the history or foundation of organizations like SNMA, LMSA and APAMSA. As a very recently created group, we do not have the same level of resources or networking (that we’re aiming towards!) By joining the MSPA network, you are helping to build this reality for future generations - and we thank you for that.
We are not micro managers (or any type of managers!) We do not “take over” your group, or change the way you are already running things as an existing chapter. Think of us more as consultants and resources - call us up when you need help organizing something, check out our resources (or suggest ones that should exist!) when you’re planning your year, reach out when you’d like to be connected to an LGBTQIA+ researcher or program, use our networks to find hosting for residency interviews, find chapters in your region to organize a state-wide initiative, etc. Our goal is to make advocacy easier!
We are not a funding source (… yet!). We cannot commit funding to your chapters at this point in time. However, we have planned micro-grants for medical students and pre-meds who may need just a little extra help.
Being a Chapter
What are the expectations for chapters?
Stay in touch - keep us updated with your events, accomplishments, and goals.
Host events on your campus! A list of suggested event guides can be found here, as well as events, seminars and guest speaker activities that can be found in your welcome packet and the newsletter.
Highly recommended: follow along with our calendar of events that we encourage our chapters to join in on!
Highly recommended: join in on our national campaigns! Each year, we organize social media campaigns around “holidays” (ie. National Coming Out Day), or in response to national events, where students across the country can organize with shared spirit and community!
Highly recommended: Take advantage of our partnerships to help find scholarships, mentorship, and conference discounts!
How do we keep up or know what’s going on?
You’ll be added to mailing list - which we use about 1-2 times a month to send updates and recaps.
Social media! Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn for more (linked below).
How do we “utilize” MSPA?
No question is too silly, small or irrelevant. When in doubt, talk to us.
Planning an event that is making you overwhelmed? Reach out and one of our National Leadership Team members will guide you step by step.
Brainstorming how to organize an LGBTQIA+ research project? We’ll connect you to our Research team, and you’ll get a chance to bounce ideas off and help make a plan.
Trying to advocate for something and want to know how other schools have succeeded before? Reach out to the the national leadership team via your liaison, and we’ll send out the “queer bat signal” to hear from the community.
Really wish there was a resource guide readily available to use? Let us know and we’ll make it happen.
We’re here to help you and your chapter in any capacity that we can!