The Executive Board members of the Council are pleased to present this annual report of Board activities.  The Council consists of all directors of community graduate programs who join the Council, and the Board is made up of members elected by the Council.  This past year (1997-98), the Board members were:

Chair:            Cary Cherniss, Rutgers University
Chair-Elect:   Alan Tomkins, University of Nebraska
Secretary:      Leah Gensheimer, University of Missouri, Kansas City
Treasurer:      Patricia O’Connor, Russell Sage College
Member:        Clifford R. O’Donnell, University of Hawaii
Member:        Steven Small, University of Wisconsin
Student Rep:  David Lounsbury, Michigan State University

A summary of Board activities this year is presented below.

1. Reorganization

The Board approved a proposal to modify the classification system used to group member programs by type and for representation on the Board.  The new system recognizes the growing importance of interdisciplinary community programs and programs that are not affiliated with psychology departments.  The new system establishes the following groupings:  Community/Clinical, Community/Other Psychology, Free Standing Psychology, Interdisciplinary, and Masters.  Each of these areas has one representative on the Board.

2. Web Page

Our student rep, David Lounsbury, has made a number of improvements to the web page.  Information on the web page now includes the current executive board, council membership list, annual reports and meeting minutes, council by-laws, the most recent survey of community training programs, course planning materials, and links to SCRA and APA.  The web page can be found at:  http://www.msu.edu/user/lounsbu1/cpdcra.html.  It also can be accessed as a link from the SCRA home page:  http://www.apa.org/divisions/div27.

3. Recruitment of New Council Members

The Board has continued to work on recruiting new members for the council. During the last year we added two new programs, Utah and Rhode Island.  Our membership now breaks down as follows:  Free standing: 8; Community/other: 4; Community/clinical: 12;  Master's: 6;  Inderdisciplinary: 3; Individual: 5; Experimental: 1.  Several initiatives designed to expand our membership have taken place, including:  development of a new pamphlet outlining benefits of belonging, identification of potential members among applied developmental programs and international programs, and contacting community programs identified in the 1995 survey of graduate education in community psychology.  The Board also approved a motion that only paid members will be listed on the web page, which hopefully will provide added inducement for programs to join.

4. Accreditation and Specialization Issues

At the last Biennial, a task force was created by SCRA and CPDCRA to look into the question of whether we should petition APA to establish prevention as a specialty in psychology, with SCRA and CPDCRA designated as the regulatory bodies.  The initiative arose out of a concern that other groups within APA might do so before we did, and they would then define prevention training and practice in ways that might be inconsistent with the community perspective.  The task force was chaired by Cary Cherniss from CPDCRA, and the other members were Ray Lorion from the prevention interest group, Melvin Wilson from SCRA, and Heather Barton as the student representative.  The task force recommended that we petition to have prevention designated a proficiency rather than a specialty.  This would help to insure that there would not be any restrictive accreditation associated with the designation. After soliciting input from SCRA members, the SCRA executive committee decided not to accept the task force's recommendation because they believed that the distinction between proficiencies and specializations is clearer in theory than in practice and that proficiencies could lead to credentialing.  Also, the responses from the membership primarily fell in the range from opposition to luke warm support for the task force's recommendations. The committee therefore concluded that the potential dangers are too unpredictable given the lack of a clear consensus among the membership for following this path.  Based on the SCRA's decision, the CPDCRA Executive Board decided not to pursue the matter further.

5. Consortia

Cliff O’Donnell has continued to work on developing the formation of consortia among programs.  At the Biennial, several program directors indicated an interest in student and faculty exchanges.  Others also expressed an interest when contacted for the Board’s annual check-in with members.  The Board thus decided to continue pursuing this initiative.  Next steps include:  1) identifying faculty and/or students who might be interested in participating in program exchanges; 2) collecting from them a brief description of what their program can offer visiting students or faculty; and 3) posting the information on the CPDCRA web page and sending it to the program directors of interested programs. The short-term goal is to start with one or two very interested and motivated students to serve as a pilot for the program to start things off.

6. 1999 Survey of Graduate Programs

This survey has been conducted by CPDCRA every four or five years.  Because the last survey was conducted in 1995, the Board began planning for the next one, which is to occur during the 1998-99 academic year.  This will be the fourth survey.  Student rep David Lounsbury has been developing the survey instrument along with colleagues at Michigan State University.  Based on a recommendation from SCRA, some new items pertaining to training in prevention will be included.

7. Training for Cultural Compatibility and Diversity

The Board has authorized two activities related to training for cultural compatibility and diversity.  First, Cliff O’Donnell is developing a reading list on cultural compatibility and establishing a resource list of people around the country who would be willing to serve as consultants on the topic of diversity training.  Second, program directors were asked to describe what their programs have done in this area as part of the annual check-in with programs.  Cary Cherniss will write an article based on the results of this survey for publication in The Community Psychologist.

8. Exemplary Community Graduates

This project stemmed from the recurrent concern voiced by graduate students regarding employment opportunities in the field.  Thanks to the efforts of Cliff O’Donnell, there soon will be a volume titled, Employment in Community Psychology: The Diversity of Opportunity, to be published by Haworth Press.  Chapters illustrate a variety of employment positions.  It will be published in 2000.

9. Advocacy for Broadening Guidelines for Internship Accreditation

Our council has continued to participate in the Council of Chairs of Training Councils (CCTC), which is playing a more prominent role in APA affairs.  At the behest of several of our members, our representative to this group argued that more time should be allocated for community-oriented training in accredited clinical internships. Our position received a sympathetic hearing from the other councils at CCTC’s midwinter meeting, and CCTC adopted a proposal expressing this point of view.  It reads as follows:  “The future employment of psychologists will include less emphasis on direct clinical services.  Therefore, CCTC encourages graduate programs and internship settings to provide a balance of supervised experience in a variety of training activities including program evaluation, prevention, consultation, supervision, program development, public policy, broad-based assessment and intervention, etc.  When students are engaged in these experiences at practicum sites, we believe that these activities should count as practicum hours.  Due to the changing market place, the emphasis of our training must be on quality and diversity of experience, rather than quantity of clinical hours.  However, we are concerned that not all training programs currently provide breadth in their training experiences.  Some programs continue to overly emphasize direct clinical services and do not include education and training in these other areas listed above.  We will encourage our individual councils and member programs to develop and emphasize broadly based training experiences.  We wish to encourage the Committee on Accreditation in the site visitor training workshops to encourage site visitors to assess breadth in training and to consistently provide feedback to programs and internships specifically on their breadth in training.” This statement was sent to the chair of APA’s Committee on Accreditation.  It also was sent to all of the chairs of the different training councils.

10. New Award for Teaching and/or Program Development

Former CPDCRA chair and SCRA president, Chris Keys, suggested that we develop an award for individuals who have done exemplary work in teaching and/or program development in our field.  Leah Gensheimer currently is working on a proposal for such an award.  We hope that all the details can be worked out and that we will be able to give the award for the first time within a year.

In closing, please remember that the Board exists to represent the interests of the Council. It functions best with your participation.  If you have an idea, suggestions, or an issue that you wish to address, please contact any board member.  In 1998-1999, they are:

Chair:             Alan Tomkins, University of Nebraska
Chair-Elect:    Cliff O’Donnell, University of Hawaii
Secretary:       Steven Small, University of Wisconsin
Treasurer:       Pat O’Connor, Russell Sage College
Member:        Cathy Stein, Bowling Green State University
Student Rep:  David Lounsbury, Michigan State University

See you at the Biennial!