Liaison Report: Council of Chairs of Training Councils

October 2010

Bob Hatcher, APTC Representative

 

Who attended. Representatives from 15 training councils, and liaisons from BEA, CoA, COGDOP (psychology department chairs), National Register; Cynthia Belar & Cathi Grus met at the APA offices all day.

 

Benchmarks Competencies Follow Up. Cathi Grus reported on the progress of an extension of the Benchmarks Competencies workgroup that has worked on ways to facilitate implementation of the Benchmarks, supported by a grant from ASPPB that I’m PI for. Linda Campbell of APTC is also on the grant. CCTC liked what we are doing, which involved streamlining the assessment form, and creating a flexible electronic version for use by programs, practica and internships.

Masters Level Psychologists. BEA (Board of Educational Affairs) has begun workgroups to consider how to relate to masters level psychologists; APA currently states that a PhD is the entry to the profession. Everyone notes the increasing role of MA folks in practice; this affects another issue, which is how psychology can respond to the growth of primary care medicine, and the need for mental health professionals in this setting. MA psychologists and MSW’s, and also psychiatric nurses, are frequently involved in these settings. Overall, much discussion of how little preparation is given in doctoral programs for these roles/skills. How to enhance this?

Education’s Relationship with Science and Practice Directorates. Although the practice directorate and the science directorate have seats on the BEA, this is not a reciprocal relationship. How to enhance education’s role in these domains at APA? Ask BEA to ask for seats; ask the science directorate and CAPP (the executive arm of the practice directorate) to come to CC TC around specific issues, TBD.

Internship Imbalance. The CCTC sponsored a summit meeting of the major training councils in September 2008 to develop specific action steps. Since then, the CCTC has reviewed progress on these steps at each meeting. Two major initiatives were the focus at this meeting: an “Internship Toolkit” was developed last year, to assist sites in developing or enhancing internships. NCSPP reports that 165 new internship slots have been developed by their schools with the assistance of the Toolkit; the VA as added something like 85 new slots as well. NCSPP has also followed up on the pledge (made by all councils) to address those programs with particularly low match rates. A good discussion followed – the 9/2008 agreement required programs with lower than 65% match rates to decrease their enrollments to enhance their rates; a more nuanced approach to this has been developed by NCSPP, involving serious consultation with these programs to help identify and address each  program’s issues that lead to the low match rate. This is an improvement over the  9/2008 agreement in your representative’s opinion; there’s no guarantee that simply reducing the number of students will lead to better match rates!

Professional Psychology Education and Training Conference Planning.  The idea for this conference grew out of the Benchmarks Workgroup; it has been picked up by the Board of Educational Affairs (BEA), which developed a planning group and conducted a survey (1300 psychologists answered) of the critical Education and Training issues that need attention. The planning group includes 3 BEA members, 3 COGDOP members, and 4 CCTC members. The general idea is to put together a small conference to address the key issues (like 36 people), but this is apparently not set in stone, though small seems to be a theme. The CCTC discussed the list of issues extensively, and came up with the following ideas for a conference theme:

What are society’s current and future needs that psychologists can help address

How can we  best prepare our students to meet these needs (take a hard look at the curriculum, including the whole sequence of training)

What are the barriers/constraints to reaching these goals

We’ll see how this develops; the conference is tentatively scheduled for 2012.

APA Center for Workforce Studies. Steve Breckler of the CWFS talked about his efforts to provide useful information (relevant, for example, to the issues discussed for the next conference). APA budget cuts have limited what’s possible, but some good data are available apparently. We discussed the limitations of projections into the future regarding job options.

Psychology as a STEM discipline.  STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) are getting a lot of attention at the Federal level re: standards for curriculum in undergraduate levels, and funding will apparently follow. There are many issues that are leading to psychology not being considered a STEM discipline; some approaches to dealing with this issue, including political ones, were discussed, but not to that much effect that your representative can see.