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Candidate Statements - President Elect
I am running for president of Division 12 because I want this division to continue to play a major role in shaping the future of clinical psychology. My career has been devoted to integrating research, education and practice, and I am committed to the synthesis of these efforts. I received my Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University under the direction of Dr. Alan Kazdin. I have been training doctoral level psychologists my entire career, some more research-oriented and some more practice-oriented. My research focuses on improving the acceptability of interventions from the perspective of client and therapist as well as its effectiveness. We must not only develop effective interventions that practitioners can and will use. I maintain an active clinical practice to stay tuned in to the concerns of practitioners. I am now the Director of Clinical Training at Emory University and served in that role previously at the University of Colorado.
I now see our field as facing a unique set of challenges if we are to maintain the integrity of our discipline. As I see it, our profession was not able to take the lead in deciding how to respond to the significant increase in demand for professional services that was brought on largely by the success of clinical psychologists in developing more effective, affordable interventions that could be useful for a much broader range of mental and medical conditions than ever before. As market forces will prevail, alternative training models emerged, but the profession was not able to maintain control over the growth to insure that all the required, high quality training experiences remained predictably available. We are left in an untenable position, with no way to mandate a balance between the academic training and the internship training both of which are required for licensure. We also do not insure suitable postdoctoral supervision while related professions have clearly identifiable and predictable career tracks. This situation is not positive for currently practicing clinicians and it deters highly qualified young people from entering our profession. Most importantly, these deterrents likely have the most impact on individuals from more diverse backgrounds who the field most needs to attract. The costs of obtaining training and the unpredictability of achieving the outcome loom large in many individuals’ career decisions. It is in our own best interest and it is our ethical obligation to resolve the current dilemmas in our training models so that we can continue to train highly effective practitioners as well as researchers. We also need to put forward coherent plans to document competency so that our professionals do not continue to struggle with different state licensing requirements.
Division 12 is a professional organization, which includes psychologists who are training or internship directors, psychologists who are active on state boards and those active in state associations. We can serve an important leadership role in addressing today’s pressing issues. I believe these issues are important enough that I am willing to devote my time and energy to serving the division membership.
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