Program builds connections between science, practice

APA?s small-grants program funds state association activities that benefit scientific and academic communities.

By Beth Azar
Monitor staff

As part of its long-standing effort to better link psychology?s scientific

and clinical arms, APA?s Science Directorate has been fostering more connections between state associations and academic psychology departments in their states.

A centerpiece of this effort is APA?s small-grants program, which funds state association activities that benefit states? scientific and academic communities.

The Science Directorate recently funded its third round of grants, providing up to $1,000 for activities that range from developing a web page devoted to psychological research, to awarding small dissertation grants to local doctoral candidates.

The program has been remarkably successful, says Virginia Holt, APA?s assistant executive director of science communications. Several state associations have received funding three years in a row, and some have even begun to see a rise in their academic and scientist membership base.

Scientists and academics established and governed most state associations. But over the years the tide shifted, and most are now dominated by practitioners. But state associations and scientists and academics have a lot to offer each other, says Holt. State associations have strong connections with state legislators, who control policy issues that affect researchers and academics, such as research funding and tenure issues. And scientists and academics provide state associations with a credible scientific base on which to base arguments about the importance of the profession.

State associations also provide a forum for practitioners and scientists to interact and learn from each other, says Margaret Charmoli, PhD, past-president of the Minnesota Psychological Association (MPA). Researchers and academics provide

practitioners with information about cutting-edge research that they can apply to their practice. And practitioners provide researchers with new research questions that arise in clinical practice.

Bridging the gap

Over the past three years, MPA has worked at reconnecting academic and scientific psychologists, and its efforts have paid off with a gradual increase in scientist/academic members, says Charmoli, a practitioner in St. Paul, Minn. APA?s small-grants program began about the same time MPA decided to launch an effort to return to its scientific roots, she says.

MPA used its first APA grant to add an academic track to its annual meeting program. The funds provided speaking honoraria as incentives for academics to give presentations on their research.

In 1997, APA provided MPA with a grant to help fund what Charmoli hopes will be an annual conference on ?Science and practice: bridging the gap.? Presenters?selected from the scientific community?spoke about their research in the context of its application to clinical practice.

Bruce Overmier, PhD, a researcher at the University of Minnesota, discussed how he and his colleagues are taking the lessons they?ve learned about memory in animals and applying it to methods for helping people with Korsakoff?s syndrome and Prader-Willi syndrome.

The experience was extremely fruitful, says Overmeir, who decided to join the state association last summer when he learned it was serious about fostering links between the two branches of psychology. After his talk, several practitioners approached him to discuss his research and offered to team up with him to test his hypotheses about memory in different patient groups. Steve Kvale, for example, works with a geriatric population at the Ah-gwah-ching Center in Ah-gwah-ching, Minn., and hopes to team up with Overmeir to design better memory assessments for his clients.

?Locked away in our laboratories, we risk abstracting the problem [we?re studying] to such a degree that it loses its sense of reality,? says Overmeir. Interacting with practitioners in state associations can keep researchers in contact with the real world, he says.

Rebuilding trust

Another excellent use of a Science Directorate grant is this year?s winning proposal from the Oregon Psychological Association (OPA), says Holt.

OPA hopes to rebuild its scientific and academic membership base enough to sustain a scientist/academic special-interest chapter of the association. Once a chapter forms, it can elect a delegate to sit on the association?s board of directors, and OPA will fund chapter activities and mailings as well as provide a section on the OPA web site and a regular column in the OPA newsletter.

But OPA is realistic, says board member Daniel McKitrick, PhD, a professor at Pacific University?s School of Professional Psychology. It will need to rebuild the trust of scientists and academics to prove its commitment to addressing their needs.

But first it must better understand those needs. So, with APA?s grant, OPA will fund a research project to assess Oregon scientists? and academics? needs. The project itself will be conducted by a research psychologist who successfully competes for the grant money, says McKitrick.

?We need to give out the message that we are coming at this from our scientific roots,? says McKitrick.