Be the First Student Voting Member on this Professional Practice Committee

CAPP, the Committee for the Advancement of Professional Practice is the main governance group over the Practice Directorate and the management of the APA Practice Organization, a 501(c)(6) organization that advocates on behalf of professional psychology. APAGS has typically appointed a liaison to attend CAPP meetings as a student representative. However, some structural changes were made to CAPP that will begin in January 2015, including the opportunity for APAGS to elect a graduate student member to serve and vote on CAPP.

This is an exciting opportunity for students interested in advocacy at the federal level, and this is the first time ever that an APAGS member has been invited to be a member of CAPP. This opportunity is to serve as a full member of CAPP, with voting privileges.

Responsibilities for serving on CAPP include the following:

Attendance at 3-4 business meetings per year, typically held at the APA building in DC or in a hotel in DC. Room, board, and ground transportation will be funded. Meetings are typically Friday/Saturday.
Attendance at State Leadership Conference, a 4 day conference in March, culminating with visits to your state’s Congressional delegation to advocate on professional issues in psychology.
Participation on the CAPP listserv, where business discussions occur between meetings.
Participation on conference calls that are scheduled on an as-needed basis.
Preference is for a two year term on CAPP. Term would begin January 2015.

Eligibility

Requirements for applicants:
- Must be currently enrolled in a doctoral program in clinical, counseling, school, or combined/integrated psychology (a program that will allow the student to be eligible for a license in psychology).
- Must graduate no sooner than May 2015.
Preferences for applicants:
- Applicants from APA accredited doctoral programs.
- Experience with advocacy in psychology (through APAGS Advocacy Coordinating Team, State/Provincial/Territorial Psychological Association, APA Division, or other group).
- Interested in promoting professional issues in psychology.
- Experience in leadership in psychology organizations.
- Ability to speak comfortably/confidently among groups of mid- and late-career professionals.

Application Process

Please provide the following information in one file (Word document or a PDF):
- Cover letter expressing interest in the position, eligibility and qualifications for the position, leadership experience, ability to commit to the responsibilities, your student status (when you anticipate graduating), and any other information you feel is important (750 words maximum).
- Condensed two page curriculum vita, highlighting goodness of fit for this position.
Submit your application to Jessica Andrade, jandrade@apa.org.
Deadline for applications is NOON eastern standard time, October 22, 2014.

Selection Process

A group of 5 members of the APAGS Committee will review applications and provide up to three applications to the full APAGS Committee to vote on.
The 9 members of the APAGS Committee will elect one of the applicants at its Fall Business Meeting, October 31-November 2.
Notification of decisions will occur on or before November 7, 2014.

What’s in a Name? An Inclusive Name for an Inclusive Committee

A few members of the committee formerly known as CLGBTC strike a pose at APA’s 2014 Convention in DC, from left: Natalie Alizaga, Nick Grant, and Julia Benjamin. (Source: the author).

The APAGS Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Concerns disagrees with Juliet’s assertion in Romeo and Juliet that “a rose by any name would smell as sweet.” Research indicates names do have the power to affect the way we perceive and interact with reality and the way we see ourselves and those around us.

Our committee believes in the importance of names—which is why we changed ours.

Our name started as the “Task Force on Sexual Minority Concerns,” which then changed to the “Committee on Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Concerns.”
In 2001, we became the “Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Concerns.”
Over the past few years, the committee has become aware that individuals are increasingly using labels beyond “lesbian,” “gay,” “bisexual” and “transgender” to describe themselves. We contemplated incorporating additional specific identities to our name, but felt the “alphabet soup” created by the acronym used to represent those identities would be increasingly unwieldy and confusing.
After much discussion regarding how to shift our committee name to represent the diversity of our student members, we decided to change our name in September 2014 to the “Committee on Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity.”

This mirrors what’s happening outside of APAGS. Some groups have begun shifting away from adding more letters to their acronyms and toward using more inclusive phrases like “Gender and Sexual Diversity.” This can be seen elsewhere in APA; in March 2014, APA Division 44 (Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues) launched a new quarterly peer-reviewed publication titled Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity.

When we introduced the idea of our own name change to the full APAGS committee, it was unanimously and enthusiastically approved. Thus, as the new Chair of this committee, I am very excited to present to you the “Committee on Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity!”

I am very excited to present to you the Committee on Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity!

Since its foundation 22 years ago, this group has worked to support graduate students who identify within the spectrum of sexual orientation and gender diversity by advocating for their concerns and providing educational, personal, and professional development opportunities. That hasn’t changed, but our name has.

Our website will show our new name soon, but we wanted to let you all know even quicker! Please feel free to contact me if you are interested in getting involved with the committee or if there are ways we can support you in your graduate training. We are here for you.

Overcoming 3 Common Dissertation Pitfalls

Most students find writing the dissertation to be the most daunting aspect of graduate school. When it comes to the dissertation, they feel overwhelmed and ill equipped, they doubt their abilities, and many give up before finishing. So challenging is the dissertation, that some have estimated that as many as 50% of graduate students are ABD (“all but dissertation”), which means students leave graduate school having met all requirements except the dissertation.

But it does not have to be this way!
Based on my many years of experience or working with doctoral students, I have discovered that there are some very common pitfalls and misconceptions about the dissertation that cut across nearly all graduate students and block their dissertation progress. The good news is that these problems are all fixable! Due to space limitations, in the rest of this blog, I briefly highlight 3 problems students frequently encounter and provide tips on overcoming them. For more detailed information on these and other common problems and tips, or for individualized assistance, contact me (tamara@thedisscoach.com).
Problem 1: “I’m too busy to write.”

Graduate students are notoriously busy! In addition to working on their dissertations, students in the PhD clinical psychology program where I teach also have to juggle taking classes, studying, teaching classes, seeing clients, conducting other research, writing journal articles, preparing conference presentations, and their personal interests and responsibilities. It’s a tall order; who has time to write! Actually there is more time than you might think. Graduate students (like everyone else) waste a lot of time that could be spent writing. Some time wasters are obvious such as time spent on facebook or checking email. But some time wasters are not as obvious.

Examples given by graduate students I talked to are time spent organizing articles, organizing one’s workspace, and preparing to write. Getting organized is important, but spending too much time on it leaves very little, if any, time for actual writing. A solution is to first create a daily grid and keep track of how you spend your time so that you become aware of what your time wasters are and how much time you waste.
Next, get rid of the obvious time wasters such as email and facebook by making their use contingent upon meeting your writing goals. Get rid of the subtle time wasters by scheduling organization time into your calendar as separate from your scheduled writing time. This ensures you devote adequate time to organizing, but when it’s time to write, organizing ends. If you lapse into your favorite time wasters when you are supposed to be writing, stop yourself! Remember that you have other places in your schedule for those activities so carefully guard your writing time and only do writing during writing time.

Problem 2: Many graduate students mistakenly believe that they cannot begin writing until they are able to have an extended period (say 2 hours) of uninterrupted time to devote to writing.

Since they rarely have such large blocks of time in their schedules, the result is that weeks (and months) go by and students never begin writing, believing that they did not have enough time. Research shows that those who write in shorter spurts of time are more productive than those who write in binges and they tend to find writing more enjoyable. The solution is to change your thinking and start writing in 30-minute blocks of time. Why 30 minutes?

Because most people can find 30-minute blocks in their schedules. Decide in advance which specific section of your project you will work on so that when the time for writing comes, you can get started right away (rather than spending your 30-minute writing time getting organized). Write as much as you can and when the time is up, stop writing. If you write for 30 minutes every day, by the end of a week, you will have spent 3 hours writing! If you wait for a 3-hour block of time to appear in your schedule, by the end of a week, you will have spent 0 hours writing!

Problem 3: Mismanagement of negative emotions. Working on the dissertation is often associated with negative thoughts (e.g., “I am incompetent,” “they made a mistake admitting me into this program”) and negative emotions (e.g., fear, anxiety).

These thoughts and feelings, if not managed properly, feed on one another and result in behaviors that are self-sabotaging. Take procrastination as an example. I had a student with lots of negative thoughts and emotions associated with his dissertation that would overwhelm him every time he tried to work on it, so rather than work on his dissertation he would over commit to other activities (e.g., teaching, taking on more clients, household chores). These activities allowed him to avoid his fears and insecurities while still feeling like he was busy doing important work that had to get done. While procrastination provides temporary relief from unwanted thoughts and feelings, the problem is these avoidance tactics prevent students from making progress on their dissertations, and that lack of progress fuels even more negative thoughts and feelings which lead to more procrastination; a vicious cycle. A solution is to recognize how your behaviors, especially those that interfere with your dissertation, are influenced by your thoughts and feelings. Applying principles of cognitive and cognitive-behavioral theory are helpful in this regard.
These are just 3 of the most common pitfalls graduate students experience while trying to complete their dissertations. There are others that are common and some that are unique to particular situations. Regardless of the problem you are having, the solution is to get active in figuring out the problem and what to do about it. If you have tried to do that and it is not working, there are other options such as seeking the assistance of a dissertation coach. Dissertation coaches can be particularly helpful if you have spent an inordinate amount of time spinning your wheels on your dissertation rather than making real progress, if your dissertation chairperson is not providing the guidance and support you need, or if you are at the beginning of your dissertation and you want someone to help you get set up for the road ahead. A dissertation coach can help you devise strategies and step-by-step plans to keep you making steady progress.

Editor’s note: This post was written by Tamara L. Brown, Ph.D.; Associate Professor of Psychology; University of Kentucky. It originally appeared on the Multicultural Mentoring blog by the Society of Clinical Psychology’s Section on the Clinical Psychology of Ethnic Minorities. (APA Division 12, Section 6). It is reposted here with generous permission. Over time, you will see all eight original posts on gradPSYCH Blog.

Dear me, future psychologist. Yours truly, Dr. Howard Gardner

It’s time for the second installment of Dear me, future psychologist, a gradPSYCH Blog exclusive in which a prominent psychologist writes a letter to his/her 16-year-old self. We hope you enjoy these letters and glean some invaluable wisdom and guidance as you decide whether to enter graduate school in psychology, as you navigate the challenges of graduate school, and as you make decisions about your career and life.

Howard Gardner (source: author’s own).

This letter is from Howard Gardner, PhD. Dr. Gardner is the Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, and Senior Director of Harvard Project Zero. He is best known for his theory of multiple intelligences, a critique of the notion that there exists but a single human intelligence that can be adequately assessed by standard psychometric instruments. During the past two decades, Gardner and colleagues at Project Zero have been involved in the design of performance-based assessments; education for understanding; the use of multiple intelligences to achieve more personalized curriculum, instruction, and pedagogy; and the quality of interdisciplinary efforts in education. For more info, please visit Dr. Gardner’s website.

FROM THE DESK OF HOWARD GARDNER:

Dear Howie,

For your bar mitzvah, cousin Walter gave you book plates decorated with three pictures: a book cover (you love to read); a musical score (you are an avid classical pianist); and a spade (you are a gard(e)ner). Those icons capture you: not athletic, not particularly social (though you have close friends), eager to go to college and to test yourself in a world wider than Scranton, Pennsylvania.

This year, Uncle Fred gave you a psychology textbook. I doubt that you knew about this subject—except for Fred, your family is not oriented toward academics. But as you leafed through the book, a picture caught your eye: the Ishihara test for color blindness. Severely color blind, you have pondered how the world looks to others. But you had not realized that scientists can study color-blindedness and elucidate what you can and cannot see.

I became a research psychologist. Though color blind, myopic, without stereoscopic vision, and prosopagnosic (all intriguing conditions!), I nonetheless elected to study artistic vision. I wrote my doctoral thesis on how individuals recognize the styles of visual artists; I was a founding member of Harvard Project Zero, a research group focused on artistic cognition; and I belong to two artistic boards (the Boston Landmarks Orchestra and New York’s Museum of Modern Art). Clearly the seed planted by Uncle Fred benefited from the gardening suggested by cousin Walter.

“Howie” in his school yearbook (source: author’s own).

By no means do I urge you to become a psychologist. (Even twenty-five years ago, I realized that neuroscience and genetics were equally germane for my scholarly interests). I urge you not to take the line of least resistance for a bright Jewish boy— becoming a doctor or a lawyer. I’d add that you should not unreflectively follow those of your peers who feel that they need either become a management consultant (McKinsey) or an investment banker (Goldman Sachs).

I know that you don’t believe in reincarnation or in an afterlife. You only get one shot on earth, and it could terminate at any time. I have two recommendations that you’ve heard from others. But since they come from someone who shares your DNA, I hope that they have added credibility:

1. Follow your passion, your love, do what you most want to do vocationally and avocationally. Don’t worry about how much money you will make or what others will think. If you embrace your interests and follow them well, you will be fine.

2. Think beyond your own needs and desires; serve the wider community. Following my quarter century of psychological research, I’ve spent the last twenty years trying to understand how individuals become good workers and good citizens and trying to help people your age pursue and embrace these broader forms of service.

Given your many talents and your supportive family, I have full confidence that you’ll make us proud of what you accomplish and how you accomplish it.

Howard

Editor’s Note: Dear Me, Future Psychologist is inspired by the Dear Me book series by Joseph Galliano. Special thanks to David A. Meyerson, Ph.D. for curating these.

Fun with data: Internship Stipends, cost of living, and practicum hours

Many graduate students in clinical, counseling and school psychology programs are preparing applications to internship positions across the country this fall. The internship component has been a requirement to earn a doctoral degree in these programs for decades. And every year the American Psychological Association’s Commission on Accreditation (CoA) collects data on students in accredited doctoral and internship programs.

Let’s have some fun with those data!

The first chart shows the mean and standard deviation of stipends from APA accredited internships from 1998 to 2012. Click the chart to magnify it:

Since 1998, the mean stipend for clinical, counseling, and school psychology interns has increased steadily. In fact, the stipends one standard deviation below the mean have increased by almost $5,000. (Source.)

While internship stipends have generally been increasing, do they cover the cost of living? My second chart presents the percent change in the median internship stipend and the percent change in the consumer price index (CPI) from year to year:

As you can see, the percent change in median stipend amount is greater than the percent change in CPI for some years but not others. It seems that although many stipends cover the cost of living, the percent change in stipend amounts is not always in pace with this marker of inflation (source). The good news? The 1998 mean intern stipend, adjusted for inflation, still beats the amount one would expect to earn in adjusted dollars for 2012 by nearly $1,500.

The percent change in stipend amounts is not always in pace with this marker of inflation.

Beyond stipends, I decided to look at the trends in practicum hours reported by internship applicants. In particular, I wondered if the internship crisis was leading to greater accumulation of hours by students who desire to appear more competitive. This third chart shows practicum hours of applicants from 2006 to 2012, broken into supervision and assessment/intervention categories:

It appears that the trends in supervision and in assessment/intervention hours are similar between the APA mean (blue) and APPIC median (red) hours. If we look at the most recent data, it appears that median hours are increasing over time. Students applied to internships with 18% more intervention/assessment hours in the eight years between 2006 and 2013.

It appears that median hours are increasing over time.

(Sources: Mean practicum hours are reported by APA, though public release of data in this area ceased in 2010. Median hours are reported by the Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers, or APPIC. It is important to note that APA accredits some doctoral and internship programs, almost all of which send students through the APPIC national match. APPIC data report students from accredited and unaccredited doctoral programs vying for accredited and unaccredited internships.)

Any thoughts on the data I presented? Are you surprised by the trends? Do any possible interpretations come to mind? I welcome you to comment on this post!