Those who worked in the Social Psychology Quarterly office with Spencer Cahill have a consistent message: Spencer was a true mentor in a multitude of ways. He did not micro-manage—this was not his style. He hired people that he trusted, invested his time and knowledge in them and then was confident about their performance. He led by example. He was devoted to the journal and to the quality of the research that appeared in its pages. To this end, he actively engaged both the graduate students and the managing editors. It was not only in direct connection with the journal that he mentored them, however.William Force and Susan Kremmel, the graduate assistants associated with the journal, mention that Spencer, through his own actions, demonstrated the passion asso- ciated with scholarship and the promise of sociology. But, at the same time, Spencer taught them very practical steps toward developing strategies and allocating time that allowed them to pursue their graduate education in sociology. As editor, Spencer Cahill also served as a mentor to authors. He was an editor that enjoyed and believed in responding to each author with a personal explanation of how the work fit with the journal. And a definite benefit for anyone receiving good or bad edi- torial news was Spencer’s habit of offering his substantive reasons for rejection or a revise and resubmit offer. When the news of Spencer’s passing was announced, one of the Deputy Editors received a call from an assis- tant professor who had recently published in Social Psychology Quarterly. Even though her only contact with Spencer was through editorial channels, she felt a very personal loss, and wanted to talk with someone who knew him. She described how Spencer guid- ed her through the stages of getting a recent paper published in Social Psychology Quarterly. She felt that his clear and instruc- tive editorial communications had not only helped to shepherd this paper through the editorial process, but had informed her about social psychology more generally. In a superb illustration of the classic role-person merger, Spencer brought his characteristic mentoring role with him to his performance of the edi- tor role—and our sub-discipline benefited from that. Spencer Cahill’s tenure as editor of Social Psychology Quarterly was ground- breaking in a variety of ways. Going back to its founding in 1937, our journal (then called Sociometry) was edited first by the mathe- matically-oriented founders of the field of sociometry, then by a series of more mea- surement-oriented social structure and per- sonality researchers and structural symbolic interactionists, and then by a series of exper- imental group processes scholars. Spencer’s selection as SPQ editor heralded the first time the role was filled by a scholar primari- ly known for qualitative research. As with these previous waves of editorships, Dr. Cahill’s personal research orientation did not signal a fundamental shift in editorial style; rather it reinforced the journal’s commit- ment to a broad social psychological audi- ence and its openness to a diversity of research methods and strategies. Spencer Cahill’s editorship also marked the first time since the journal began its affil- iation with the American Sociological Association in 1950 that it was headed by someone not in a Ph.D. granting department —and the resources that usually go along with such a department.Two additional chal- lenges came in the form of major institution- al changes—one at ASA and one at the University of South Florida—both occurring at the beginning of Cahill’s editorial transi- tion. First, during the same summer that Spencer began his tenure as Social Psy- chology Quarterly editor; the department he Social Psychology Quarterly 2006, Vol. 69, No. 4, v–vi Deputy Editors’ Note In a departure from the norm, the outgoing deputy editors (Owens, Robinson, Sell), offer this deputy editors’ note for the final issue of 2006, some two months after the untimely death of Editor Spencer E. Cahill. Dr. Cahill and his editorial team’s tenure on the journal ends on December 31, 2006. v