The faculty steering committee for the formation of a University of California Center for Research on SPEDDR appointed a doctoral student steering committee in 2005. The doctoral student steering committee met for the first time in January 2006 in Santa Barbara. At this meeting, the steering committee identified our goals both as an advisory body and as an independent committee. We engaged in a roundtable discussion to identify possible areas of collaboration, and began exploring funding resources. The committee’s main charge for this meeting was to identify activities and tasks of the faculty committee that would most benefit doctoral students and present these at the faculty meeting, being held concurrent with the student meeting. In addition to identifying potential avenues of outreach to fellow students as directed by the faculty steering committee, we also identified the dissemination of research into practice as a primary goal. The committee decided that our first major task to address both of those goals will be hosting a conference on research to practice in the field of SPEDDR.