Category Archives: Graduate School

Are the Courts in Our Future?

Vintage Balance Scale Psychology doctoral program at Argosy University Denver held responsible for lying. University ordered to pay millions to its students.

The State of Colorado and its Attorney General prosecuted Argosy-Denver on behalf of 66 students who enrolled in Argosy’s EdD in counseling psychology (EdD-CP) program. According to the Attorney General’s Office, “Argosy is accused of deceiving, misleading, and financially injuring students seeking doctorate of education in counseling psychology degrees in violation of the Colorado Consumer Protection Act. Under the settlement terms, Argosy will pay approximately $3.3 million in restitution and fines,” of which approximately $2.8 million will go directly to the aggrieved students.

What happened?!

Argosy students were explicitly and implicitly led to believe that their EdD-CP program was seeking APA accreditation, when in fact, the program was not. “Argosy-Denver’s EdD-CP program would ultimately fail to fulfill a promise made to its students – eligibility to become licensed as psychologists in Colorado,” the Attorney General’s Office stated in its Complaint to the Denver District Court.

Students’ attempts to challenge their schools through the court system have historically been unsuccessful, until recently. The Argosy case is not the first occasion in which students were fruitful in seeking redress by the Courts. Here are four examples, with a fifth new case:

1. In Russell v. Salve Regina College (1989), a nursing student was dismissed on the basis of her obesity. Her academic performance was satisfactory except in one course where her grade was related to weight, not performance. The Court ruled that the college had breached its contract with Russell and awarded her monetary damages.

2. In Elliott v. University of Cincinnati (1999), a doctoral student who failed his oral examination claimed breach of contract because only four committee members were present at his examination; the Graduate Student Handbook required a five-member committee. The court found that the Handbook was contractually binding on the university, and that a four-member committee violated that contract. The university had to give the student another oral exam.

3. In Sharick v. Southeastern University of the Health Sciences (2000, 2008), a fourth-year medical student was dismissed after failing his last course in medical school. Sharick sued the university for breach of contract. After dismissal by a trial court, reversal by the appellate court, and a hearing by a second trial court jury, Sharick was awarded $813,000 for past lost earnings and $3.5 million for lost future earnings.

4. In Gauthier c. Saint-Germain, Boudreau et L’Université d’Ottawa (2010), a student sued her university for educational malpractice after failing to receive her doctorate. The appeals court ruled that if the case was pleaded with specific evidence of what the contracts and breaches were, her claims could lead to an award of damages.

5. Similar to the Argosy-Denver case, five former and current Globe University/Minnesota School of Business students filed a class-action lawsuit against their school on October 2, 2013, claiming that Globe misled students about its accreditation and post-graduate employment rates. Judgment TBD.

What do these cases mean for you, the Psychology Graduate Student?

What the above cases teach us is that there is a contractual relationship between students and schools, and both sides must work to fulfill the explicit and implied promises they make to one another. Just as schools should make sure their students work hard and attain programmatic goals and competencies before graduating and becoming psychologists, students should feel empowered to make sure their schools are living up to their end of the bargain by providing students with high quality education and training experiences, as well as an avenue toward graduation and licensure.

Would a student win a case against his or her school for losing accreditation, providing inadequate supervision, or failing to place students in externships or internships? That may be for the Courts to decide.

Hopefully, students and schools can resolve these and other key issues collaboratively, making legal recourse unnecessary.

This article was co-written with Lawrence N. Meyerson, JD, EdD.

APA in Cuba

Buy the ticket, take the ride. A phrase coined by a very good friend and an itinerant traveler in his own right, the words and underlying meaning were never truer than on my recent trip with APA to Cuba.

When I first received the email alert back in February with subject line: “Psychologists to travel to Cuba,” I was excited beyond words and a bit resigned to the fact that my efforts to save money (I had just decided to give up my apartment in downtown Palo Alto and move back in with my parents) would be temporarily put on hold: there was no way I could miss this trip.

As an undergrad at UCLA, I minored in Latin American studies; Cuba, in particular, was one of my favorite topics of study. I was fascinated by this group of revolutionaries that had overthrown their government in order to make a vast departure from the political structure of the western world. I had also learned about their first-rate education system, with literacy rates higher than those of the United States, and socialized health care despite having little to no access to many goods and services.

The opportunity to travel to learn about their health care system as part of my current training inclinical psychology seemed like it would be an invaluable aspect of my professional growth; even though I knew that I would be in the midst of internship application deadlines at the time of the trip, I had to go.

Landing in Cuba really was like going back in time 50 years cuba neighborhood – old Fords and Plymouth convertibles, no advertisements for any goods and services except for those promoting public health and supporting ‘la revolucion’, and crumbling architecture representing the remains of both Soviet and colonial influence.

The week consisted of visits with psychologists from the Cuban Ministry of Public Health, investigators involved in community based participatory research, and practitioners at local clinics and community mental health sites, where we learned in-depth about the comprehensive model of Cuban health care. An opportunity to see the famed Buena Vista Social Club perform live was a special treat and very moving.

As the only graduate student on the trip, I found myself among established psychologists from all over the country – professionals working in VA medical centers, hospitals, universities, private practice, and various capacities for APA – and inspired by the range of their experience and depth of their careers. At the end of each day’s activities, trip leader and Past APA President Suzanne Bennett Johnson would facilitate a debrief session on the thoughts, impressions, and questions that remained with us from the day. Hearing how my fellow group members crafted their questions, provided feedback, and articulated their interests and impressions of the trip, gave me a glimpse into the thought processes of these highly trained, well experienced clinicians, researchers, and doctors. And for the first time I found myself in an interaction with psychologists that wasn’t supervisor/supervisee or advisor/student, but rather as a peer and junior colleague. Being a Spanish speaker and having studied Latin America, I had much of my own unique knowledge to bring to the group, which was a really important moment for me in my development as a psychologist in training – a ‘taking-my-place-at-a-seat-at-the-table’ kind of feeling.

Upon my return, I shared my experience during my Spanish-speaking group supervision at one of my current training sites – a community mental health clinic which provides services to monolingual Spanish speakers. Intrigued by my account of the week, my peers asked how I became involved with the trip and whether my attendance had to do with membership in any particular APA division or group. I explained that while I am a member of APA, in this case, the trip came about just from noticing an email. To which, one of my colleagues responded ‘La moraleja de la historia: lea los emails’.
Buy the ticket, take the ride, and read the emails.

APA group with Cuban researchers at the Center for Psychological and Sociological Investigation

Paying It Forward

In my January 2014 gradPSYCH column, I described the idea of paying it forward and helping out the generation of graduate students following us, as well as publicly thanking those who helped us while we were in school. I am happy to start this feature off, and here are the many people I’d like to thank for their assistance, support and encouragement while I was in grad school.

First year blues – Moving across country to a rural town was tough for a California raised city boy like myself. Tracy Rachmiel was an advanced student when I started grad school and gave me numerous tips on surviving the academic hurdles and how to survive the long winters in Binghamton.
Struggling in supervision –

Tamra Holtzer & Nabil El-Ghoroury (El-Ghoroury, 2000)

I shared a very challenging clinical supervisor withTamra Holtzer; we’d prepare for supervision together & discuss long cases on walks around campus.
Changing advisors – After struggling for several years with a very challenging mentor (think Voldemort from Harry Potter), talking with Susan Latham encouraged me to take the scary step of switching labs and mentors. She was already in the lab I planned to move to, and without her encouragement I might never have switched.
Applying for internship – While the internship situation when I applied had not quite hit the crisis stage, the application process was complicated and stressful. My internship prep group, Tanya Williamson and Roxanne Manning, made this process less painful and more enjoyable (and even better when Tanya and I matched to the same internship).
Nabil El-Ghoroury, Tanya Williamson & Roxanne Manning, celebrating their graduation with their PhDs!!! (El-Ghoroury, 2002)
Difficult dissertation – Who doesn’t have a problem completing the dissertation? For me, it was compounded by the death of my mother while I was on internship and dissertating. Coaching and support from Elisa Krackow helped me wrap up and graduate!

If it takes a village to raise a child, perhaps it takes a department and a cohort of friends to help one earn a doctorate! This list is incomplete; I don’t have enough space to thank everyone for their assistance in graduate school. I know without the support of these friends and others, graduate school would have been a much more difficult (and lonely) journey.

Who helped you get through graduate school? Share your thanks to them in the comments. We’ll invite a couple of you to share your stories in your own article on gradPSYCH Blog!

Happy holidays

APAGS would like to wish everyone a wonderful holiday season! This has been quite a productive year for APAGS and we look forward to continuing to advocate for students in the new year. Best wishes to all!

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These students got authorship and a trip to Hawaii. What are you waiting for?

The saying goes that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Correct! For this prize, write a compelling ethics paper and then you can treat yourself to many delicious lunches.

APAGS and the APA Ethics Committee have teamed up for the 13th time to award a prize to a graduate student whose winning paper successfully examines psychology and ethics. Applications are due January 3rd.

If you win, you are entitled to

$1,000
A round trip ticket to our 2014 Convention in Washington, D.C.
- with free registration
- three night of hotel accommodations
- a session to present your paper and receive your award
The chance to get your work published in a peer-reviewed journal

Angela Haeny, M.A. from the University of Missouri and Christine Paprocki, M.A. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill were APA’s 2013 winners. Angela wrote a paper on Ethical considerations for psychologists taking a public stance on controversial issues, and Christine wrote on Trainee perspectives on tensions between religious beliefs and affirming treatment of LGBT clients (follow the links to their articles in Ethics and Behavior).

From L-R: Dr. Nabil El-Ghoroury, head of APAGS, stands with winners Ms. Angela Haeny and Ms. Christine Paprocki, and Dr. Steven Behnke, head of the Ethics Office, on the balcony of the APAGS Suite in Honolulu, Hawaii. (Source: APAGS).

From L-R: Dr. Nabil El-Ghoroury, head of APAGS; winners Ms. Angela Haeny and Ms. Christine Paprocki; and Dr. Stephen Behnke, head of the APA Ethics Office. On the balcony of the APAGS Convention Suite in Honolulu, Hawaii. (Source: APAGS).

For an inside track on why you should apply, I spoke recently with Angela and Christine.

Eddy: Please tell me, how did you arrive at your topics?

Angela: I have personal interest in being involved in controversial issues and wondered what that might look like as a psychologist in training.

Christine: My paper dealt with the ethical implications of “values conflicts” in which psychologists or trainees feel that their own beliefs would prevent them from working with a certain type of patient. I wanted to further explore the tricky ethical dilemmas that arise when this occurs within a training context.

Eddy: What benefits—obvious or not-so-obvious—did you get from being involved in this process?

Christine: It was a great way to delve into the details of a thorny ethical issue and write a more theoretical piece—as graduate students, we get much more training in research-oriented writing, so this was a wonderful growth experience! Also, I had a fantastic time at the APA convention. I had never been to this conference before, and was really impressed by the breadth and diversity of topics explored—it also didn’t hurt that it was in Honolulu! [Ed. note: We hope D.C. isn’t too shabby an alternative for 2014 attendees.]

Angela: Writing the ethics paper caused me to become more intimate with the Ethic’s Code and to think more deeply about ethical issues and considerations for psychologists taking a public stance on controversial issues.

Eddy: What advice would you have for 2014 applicants?

Angela: Choose a topic that interests you and have fun writing the paper! This is a great opportunity for you to showcase your knowledge on the APA Ethic’s Code and raise an issue that is important to you.

Christine: Definitely apply if you are thinking about it—it is an excellent way to engage more deeply with an important ethical issue affecting our field. As with any writing submission, have plenty of people read it and offer suggestions. Write about something that you feel passionately about and that really sparks your interest.

Consider working on your application over Winter Break!