Dr. Amy Reynolds Presidential Initiatives

It is my great pleasure and honor to build on the leadership of Dr. Anneliese Singh who recently focused her presidency on Liberation and Dr. Mary O’Leary Wiley who is currently focusing on Engagement. My desire is to focus my presidency on Transformation. To get to liberation, we must transform ourselves, our institutions, and our communities. I also believe that to fully engage with our members as well as counseling psychologists who are not current SCP members, we must transform as an association.

My goal is to transform what we do and how we do it within SCP so we can create an inclusive and liberatory Counseling Psychology (CP). There cannot be inclusion without change. There cannot be liberation without transformation. The purpose of inclusion is not to bring in others to adopt or adapt to our norms and view of our profession but rather to deconstruct the core of what we do (our assumptions, public norms, hidden culture) and transform with true engagement, involvement, and inclusion to rebuild our profession and association.

This presidential theme of transformation will be addressed through the following initiatives.

Transforming Counseling Psychology Curriculum and Praxis: to critically examine and deconstruct how various competencies, courses, and content are taught within CP training programs, and then re-imagine, dream, and reconstruct new and transformative ways to teach and train. This initiative is focused on creating various workgroups where counseling psychology faculty, internship/postdoc training staff, and doctoral students can come together to critically examine and deconstruct how various competencies, courses, internship/postdoc seminars, and content are taught, and then re-imagine, dream, and reconstruct new and transformative ways to teach and train. So far, 12 specific competencies, core courses, or unique CP strengths have been identified.

Transforming Who We Are: through Centering Indigenous People and Perspectives in Counseling Psychology, a group of indigenous counseling psychologists working together to dream and build a counseling psychology that includes and celebrates indigenous people and perspectives. Through this group, we will hopefully explore how to expand the number of indigenous counseling psychologists, examine what is needed by current indigenous counseling psychologists and graduate students, and determine how to best provide support and nourishment for indigenous counseling psychologists who are already working in the field and possibly not connected to SCP

Transforming SCP Policies, Structures, and Practices: to work and collaborate with our consultants, Jernigan and Associates, through the lens of uprooting anti-Black racism to assess, interrogate, and transform SCP policies, structures, and practices and engage in ongoing work as well as through CP and Everyday Reparations, a work group focused on increasing awareness of how to engage in everyday acts of reparations including a survey of Black CP and graduate students to gather information on the levels and types of harm they have experienced or are experiencing as part of their graduate training, professional work, and their engagement with SCP.

Additionally, two STGs will be formed this year to enhance our society.

Transforming & Strengthening SCP Sections: to transform and strengthen how SCP Sections operate and connect with SCP structure.

Embracing Master’s Issues: to address ongoing master’s issues within Counseling Psychology and continue to take on a leadership role with APA’s work with master’s programs.