Speakers and organizers gather on stage during the River Cities I-O (RCIO) Psychology Conference at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
The River Cities I-O Psychology (RCIO) Conference Series is an annual outreach and education initiative managed by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga M.S. degree program in Industrial and Organizational (I-O) Psychology focused on putting psychological science to work. The conference theme for 2025 was “Optimizing human performance in an era of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital monitoring.”
This was the 21st annual event in this RCIO series and the 18th here at UTC. This event has become the premier student research conference in I-O psychology in the United States. Despite campus construction challenges, this year’s conference was hailed as one of the best yet.
More than 130 attendees participated in the full-day Saturday conference (Nov. 8), with nearly 50 students engaging in a free Friday afternoon (Nov. 7) panel discussion on strategies for landing jobs and gaining graduate school admission with an undergraduate degree in psychology.
Undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students from universities including Appalachian State University, Middle Tennessee State University, University of Alabama, Bellarmine University, Auburn University, Kennesaw State University, Clemson University, Indiana University–Indianapolis, Austin Peay State University, and UTC networked, shared their research, and learned from leaders in the field.
Featured speakers
The RCIO 2025 conference featured an impressive lineup of speakers exploring the intersection of AI and workplace psychology:
- Dr. Richard Landers, University of Minnesota and President-elect of SIOP – Effectively Bridging Computer Science and I-O Psychology to Solve Practical Problems
- Grace Winder, MS, University of Utah – Beyond Buzzwords: How AI is Transforming Learning and Development
- Mark Kammerdiener, MS, True Course People Solutions and UTC I-O alumnus – Ethical Practices of AI in Performance Management and Employee Development
- Dr. Shawn Berman (Appalachian State), Erin Lally (Appalachian State), Jasil Pearson (UTC I-O), Dr. Chris Cunningham (UTC) – IOP Evolution during the AI Revolution: How to Level Up Your I-O Psychology Skills to Adapt in the Rise of AI
- Dr. Neil Morelli, Workplace Labs Consulting and UTC I-O alumnus – Leading Through the AI Transition: How People Managers Build AI-Ready Teams
Celebrating student research
A highlight of each RCIO conference is the student poster session, where participants share their developing and completed research in a collaborative atmosphere. This year, 36 posters were presented, with special recognition shared for the top three (as evaluated by a panel of five judges):
- 1st place: Supervisor-focused impression management and social undermining as self-enhancing responses to perceived job insecurity
– J. Luke Wiley, Christopher J.L. Cunningham, Kristen J. Black, Pratibha Deepak (UTC) - 2nd place: Anxiously engaged: general anxiety as a moderator of techno-insecurity and work engagement
– Amy Kim, Ava Paull, Michelle Nguyen, Paige Watson (Auburn University) - 3rd place: AI-enhanced resume development
– Manny Golfe, Abby Crane, Leah Hughes, Shawn Bergman (Appalachian State University)
Impact and leadership
Conference proceedings—including this year’s presentations and those from past events—will soon be available through the RCIO conference proceedings website, which has already seen more than 76,000 downloads worldwide, including 25,000 in 2025 alone.
The conference was coordinated by Dr. Chris Cunningham, Dr. Kristen Black, Dr. Feng Guo, Dr. Pratibha Deepak, and UTC’s MS students in Industrial-Organizational Psychology, with support from Dean Pam Riggs-Gelasco of the College of Arts and Sciences.
More details about this conference series can be found on the RCIO conference website.
RCIO photos courtesy of UTC Department of Psychology
