Rodney L. Lowman, PhD

Lowman's video statement

 

Biography

I am a first-generation Latino-American on my mother's side and, on my father's side, a direct descendant of pioneers who helped settle the West. I'm the first in my immediate family to graduate from college. I am honored to be running for APA president-elect and am excited about the opportunities to help make APA the "go to" organization for all fields of psychology.

A fellow in four APA Divs. (Society of Clinical Psychology, Society of Consulting Psychology, Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and International), I have emphasized the following areas in my career:

Education and training: My PhD in psychology is from Michigan State University, where I received outstanding training in both industrial-organizational and clinical psychology. I completed an APA-accredited internship in clinical psychology at the Texas Research Institute of Mental Sciences in Houston. I've taught and conducted research at several universities, including the University of Michigan, Duke University School of Medicine and University of North Texas. Since 1998, I've been with the not-for-profit California School of Professional Psychology (now part of Alliant International University) where I am a distinguished professor. Having lived abroad twice and three times in U.S. border cities, I care deeply about internationalizing psychology.

Science and scholarship: I've written or edited nine books and edited two APA journals (including, currently, Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research). I have published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters and made hundreds of presentations on six continents. The themes of my work include professional ethics, career assessment and counseling, psychotherapy of work dysfunctions, and internationalism-multiculturalism. My latest book is "Internationalizing Multiculturalism: Expanding Professional Competencies for a Globalized World."

Professional practice: I have practiced psychology throughout my career, including full time for seven years. My areas of professional practice include both I-O consulting and clinical. In clinical, I've worked with children, families and adults and on the organizational and consulting side, with employees and institutions. I am board certified in assessment psychology.

Service to professional psychology: I have served on a number of APA boards and committees including as chair of the Board of Professional Affairs, Board of Convention Affairs, the CEO's Strategic Planning Advisory Committee, and the Committee on Professional Practice and Standards. I have been a member of the Ethics Committee and Committee on Psychological Tests and Assessments.

Organizational leadership and consulting: I have served in leadership roles throughout my career, particularly in high-risk start-ups and turnarounds. I've been a department chair, dean, provost, acting president and president of two universities, president of two psychological societies, and been a consultant to a number of organizations in the for-profit and not-for profit sectors. I understand complex organizations and how to help them be more effective.

Family: My wife, Dr. Linda Richardson, is a clinical psychologist who has served as a psychologist and manager in correctional institutions and in public service settings. She specializes in serious mental illness and serves on APA's Task Force on Serious Mental Illness. Our daughter is an educational technology entrepreneur and writer.

Lowman's candidate statement

My presidential initiatives are:

Recognizing our successes, building our future: Compared with other disciplines, organized psychology is still in its infancy. Yet extraordinary progress has been made in creating a science-based discipline with robust practice opportunities. We need to celebrate our successes by identifying and learning from them. We also need to build APA into a long-lasting home for all psychologists by finding the commonalities and synergies that cut across our many areas of specialization.

Nurturing the next generations of psychologists: Neither APA nor psychology will have a viable future unless we attract talent for generations to come. We need to address immediate needs, such as for internships, but also how our training models might become more flexible for future practice needs and opportunities. We must ensure that APA is accessible and useful for early career psychologists.

Science-practice and practice integration: Psychology is nothing without its science, but it will have little impact without applications to practice. Specialization is inevitable as research and practice knowledge grows but simultaneously it can create silos. APA can be a catalyst to help us identify commonalities across all psychology areas of knowledge and practice.

Psychology for the public good and national health-care reform: Psychologists can make extraordinary contributions to help individuals, groups and organizations. We are a widely respected discipline, but earn too little recognition for what we are qualified to do. National health-care reform is one example. Health and mental health psychologists need to be full partners in health-care reform, but this initiative also needs the expertise of many other areas of psychology, including organizational psychology and team science.

Internationalizing psychology: U.S. psychology is not an exception to the need to globalize. The opportunity is to internationalize psychology is an integral part of all that we do.