Dr. Arpana Inman's Presidential Initiative

2018 SCP Theme: President Arpana Inman’s program theme for Division 17, Society of Counseling Psychology (SCP) is Leadership through Advocacy: Influencing and Advancing Change. We invite symposia (50 minutes), roundtables, and posters that focus on this theme and presidential initiatives. Please note that we are not accepting paper presentations. See https://scp.wpengine.com for more information on the mission, goals, and approaches of Counseling Psychology.

My presidential initiatives will broadly focus on the theme of Leadership through Advocacy. In particular, I wish to focus on: 

• Respectful dialogues and social justice engagement: I know this is an ongoing area of growth for many of us. We need to address this challenge through all of our interactions and activities. I want to give a shout out to our VP for Diversity and Public Interest, Anneliese Singh, for her strong leadership on this issue and look forward to our continued work in this area.
• Attending to the Master’s Training Issues: The Master’s Training Issues are not new to our discipline. Many of our colleagues have been advocating and writing on these issues for several years. However, our field is even more at a critical juncture now because of a challenge to our professional identities and the changing landscape of licensure. We need to support our master’s graduates and practitioners as they navigate licensure and other practice issues. We need to foster and recognize that many of our faculty and supervisors hold dual professional identities as doctoral level counseling psychologists and master’s level counselor/counselor educators. We need to strengthen our doctoral and master’s training programs. I recognize that the master’s training issue is challenging depending on your affiliation (Department of Education, Department of Psychology) as well as the larger state level issues. We have some work to do in this area with our different stakeholders (e.g., APA, ACA, MPCAC, etc.). I hope to carry on the advocacy work that our current President Marty Heesacker has initiated along with several of our colleagues.
• Leadership for mid-career psychologists (MCPs) and ECPs: Increasingly, our mid-career colleagues as well as some ECP’s find themselves taking on administrative leadership roles in higher education/clinical settings with insufficient preparation. It is my hope that we can examine these recent trends and proactively engage in dialogues and trainings related to taking on such important leadership roles.