January 18, 2006
Welcome to the 2006 Mid-Winter Conference of the National Council of Schools and Programs of Professional Psychology, one of the largest in our 30 year history. I am Michael Horowitz, president of The Chicago School and of NCSPP. Thank you to our delegates, faculty and guests for sticking with us through a change in country and venue and the related difficulties that entailed.
Thank you to four fantastic sponsors of this conference – APA’s Practice Directorate led by the fabulous Russ Newman – discuss increasing links with the practice community; APA’s Education Directorate led by the equally fabulous Cynthia Belar, the wonderful National Register led by wonderful Judy Hall and the Forest Institute, whose visionary leader, Mark Skrade, I will introduce to you shortly. I thank him not only for his leadership of the conference but for putting his school’s resources behind it. Welcome to Celiane Rey-Casserley, new chair of the committee on Accreditation and Director of its wonderful office, Susan Zlotlow – thank you and Andrea Morrison for training us yesterday; Steve McCutcheon, Chair of APPIC– all of our distinguished liaisons and guests – Jeannie to provide list. Stress desire for their full participation and ask delegates to welcome them Let me point out to you Tori Angelis, first time an NCSPP conference has had an APA Monitor reporter on site - she is here to cover our conference from the APA Monitor. Your executive committee has worked hard to engage APA and Tori’s presence here is part of that effort. Please take time to talk to her about our history, your program and most of all our future.
In the December American Psychologist there was an article by Norcross and an honorary NCSPPer, Jessica Kohout, about the history of graduate psychology study over the last thirty years. One of my wonderful mentors, VA Psychologist Charles Peterson, a prolific writer of published psychology articles, reminded us that a Psychology journal can at best be a view of the history of Psychology. But this article announced one thing clearly about the present and the future – NCSPP and the Vail Model, today celebrating our thirtieth anniversary, are the new majority, and the future of this great profession, with limitless possibilities. Today Psy.D. programs are training the majority of this nation’s clinical psychologists. Add in our practitioner Ph.D. programs, Psy.D. programs in school, counseling psychology, business and forensic psychology. Note the fact that among doctoral psychology education, it is only these programs that anticipate continued rapid growth in numbers of programs and students. In a world moving toward an information and behavior- based economy, our programs are meeting the demand for sophisticated professional psychologists like the Psy.D. psychologists who run our nation’s air force aviation safety program, counsel business leaders, serve our communities with sophisticated psychological services and increasingly educate tomorrow’s professional psychologists. Our growth curve will get bigger now. In thirty years we went from zero to over 50 % of clinical psychology education; 30 years from now it will be unimaginable to become a professional psychologist any other way. I can comfortably tell you that the era of the Vail Model today starts a new phase at age thirty, no longer a revolution but beginning its time as the dominant model of educating professional psychologists. Of note in that same article was the rise of neuroscience programs and this bodes well for us as well. Psychology is a Science and a Profession and needs strong programs serving Science and Practice, informed by each other.
In our first thirty years we were fighting for recognition and acceptance. Most of us, me included, were a bit torn by our training in traditional Ph.D. academic programs and our aspirations to develop a profession. It took us a while to figure out how to have programs with predictable beginnings and ends – but we did. We have not yet established the strong professional culture that medicine, law, nursing, social work and other professions have. But we can do it and we will – our model makes sense and a new generation is taking over. I’m especially pleased to see all of the NCSPP alumni here in roles of leadership. Today we start the first NCSPP conference chaired by a Psy.D., the visionary leader Mark Skrade. The rest of the committee is Cheryll-Rothery Jackson, also a Psy.D. and graduate of one of the nation’s first Psy.D. programs at Rutgers, and Linda Garcia-Shelton and I, trained and educated old school but with the NCSPP program now.
So our role as the new establishment, the new majority is huge, our responsibility enormous. And so we come to this conference and the idea of once again, tearing apart old notions of professional psychology and visioning way beyond what exists today. We’ll hear visions of the future from four visionary psychologists and one global leader who have created unforeseen models of Psychology practice, education, community and global leadership. This afternoon we’ll work with them in smaller groups and tomorrow we’ll try some new skills in these areas with leaders of our own. Tomorrow afternoon we will end with a reverse panel where our conference leaders will ask you the questions and find out the next steps you want them to take and challenge you in your next steps as the new majority in professional psychology. It is my hope that the panel will continue our tradition of respectful, open and provocative critical conversations. We’ve also opened big chunks of time for conversations like these to take place in small groups of your own creation at the end of today and tomorrow.
Psychology only has to be as small as our fears and can be as big as our wildest dreams. It is after all the science and art and profession of people, communities and behavior. NCSPP mid-winter conference is a time to affiliate and network and see friends. But each year it is also a time to renew our vision and create the next impossible dream that we will actualize. Please think big as you spend the next few days together – think of the professional psychologist leading nations, institutions of higher education, communities and a new era of practice. Thank you!
Mark Skrade received his Psy.D. from the Forest Institute. I’ll tell you just two of his many accomplishments and you’ll get the idea that he makes no small plans: working outside organized psychology he created the biggest federally funded program in professional psychology today - getting the Department of Labor to back the creation of the Heartland of America Consortium so rural America could train sophisticated psychologists at the pre-doctoral and postdoctoral level – the grant also provided non-Psychology jobs and revenue to his community. He led the implementation of the school as lender program in the independent graduate schools of psychology, a program that will provide millions, that’s right millions, of dollars in unrestricted direct financial aid to America’s professional psychology students in the years ahead– dollars that were previously flowing as excess profit to the banks that service our students’ loans. And he is an NCSPP program alum with a distinguished clinical and forensic career who has returned to lead his alma mater to a bright future.
Please welcome a gentleman that makes no small plans and our first Psy.D. NCSPP conference chair, Mark Skrade.
