A fond farewell

By Jill N. Reich, PhD
APA Executive Director for Education

I can't believe I'm writing this column for the last time but, indeed, when you read this, I'll be ensconced at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, as the academic vice president and dean of faculty and a professor of psychology. My four years at APA have been exciting, wonderful, I think productive and always interesting. But it is time to be on campus again and to allow another psychologist the opportunity and challenge to be at the education helm. I leave knowing that the Education Directorate is in good hands. The staff are professional, expert in their areas and dedicated to advancing quality education in psychology and to applying psychological principles and knowledge to education.

Our work on behalf of education

When I first arrived at APA, I began by organizing our work into six general areas that span all levels and types of education. The first area is the work we do to provide information to the education community. As the national association, APA holds a unique place in the education system because it is the central place from which to gather and report data about all aspects of our education endeavors--numbers and demographics of students, curricula, resources, faculty and outcomes. We seek to provide the data our departments, programs, students and faculty need to make good decisions.

A second area of our work is developing standards and other mechanisms of quality assurance for our discipline. APA is perhaps best known for its APA accreditation in areas of professional psychology. We also have an approval system, recently reviewed and strengthened, for organizations which offer continuing professional education. And it is my fervent hope that by the time you read this column, our draft standards for the teaching of high school psychology will have been approved--a major step toward providing a strong scientific and applied foundation of psychology for more than a million students each year.

Curricula and program development constitute another way that APA works to enhance quality education. Over the past four years, working with various committees and task force groups, we have provided a wide range of material for use in introductory psychology courses, including unit lesson plans, demonstrations and career information. APA's Diversity Task Force produced an annotated bibliography, a series on teaching tips and reports on diversity from leading textbook authors. These four years have produced reports and resources on graduate education in psychopharmacology, primary care and interdisciplinary health care to name but a few. And our Community College Working Group is working to prepare resources to meet the unique challenges of their classrooms.

In all of these endeavors, we also keep an eye toward how we can enhance psychologists' professional development. Our high school teachers' workshops have served as a model for others to emulate and reproduce. The directorate continues to build new teaching workshops and institutes for new and continuing faculty around the country and to foster partnerships among all educators. We also work to enhance practitioners' development through our continuing professional education activities, which have expanded to include cruises, weekends and an expanded series of independent studies.

We also work to bring our discipline to education--an important and dynamic recognition of psychology's special role in education. This area is establishing its niche through its programs such as the School-to Work project, the Learner Centered Principles and most recently in the award from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop high school curricula.

Finally, the Education Directorate serves members through its advocacy on behalf of education. Our work seeks to increase federal support for education in psychology. As our president-elect often reminds me, if the federal government agrees to support our education, they are acknowledging the importance of our work to society.

Thank you for your contributions

I am pleased to report that APA is strong and well aware of the importance of supporting education in all of these ways and at all levels. Now we need your involvement and interest. If you aren't already participating, do so--through your divisions, states, the directorate or its committees.

The folks in the directorate have been discussing what has made these years so productive and fun. I offer our perspective as good advice to all: Think wisely, speak gently, love much, laugh often, work hard, give freely and be kind.

I thank each of you for your assistance to me, for your work on behalf of education, and for your contributions to psychology, and I wish you all farewell.



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