PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

Candidates state priorities, three-year plan

In a continuing effort to provide members with information on president-elect candidates' views of pertinent issues in psychology, APA's Election Committee has asked each of the candidates to answer six questions. The candidates will answer two questions each for the June, July/August and September issues of the Monitor.

In June issue:

• What steps would you take in the next three years toward accomplishing your vision for APA?

• What would you rank as your top three priorities for APA and why?

In July/August issue:

• How will you advance the Decade of Behavior and how will you advance the education of the general public about the value of psychology?

• How will you advance the protection of the doctoral standard and address the supply and demand issue?

In September issue:

• What social or professional issues, e.g., diversity, aging, managed care, prescription privileges, will you emphasize during your term?

• How do you propose to deal with membership recruitment and retention?

Candidates answers are limited to 100 words for each question.

1. What steps would you take in the next three years toward accomplishing your vision for APA?

2. What would you rank as your top three priorities for APA and why?

LUDY T. BENJAMIN JR., PhD

Question #1:
A. Establish a task force of APA and APS members to create a working coalition of the two organizations that would ensure cooperation in areas of mutual interest.

B. Establish APA-college jointly funded summer programs in psychology for junior- and senior-high minority students.

C. Greatly enhance the public-information efforts of APA through a coordinated program with state associations, universities, and regional psychological associations. Ensure that the staff resources needed to do these jobs exist within APA Central Office. Ultimately, however, this work will be done outside of Washington by psychologists who appreciate the importance of such activities.

Question #2:
The voice of science within APA has been seriously eroded, a voice that is needed for both guild and public interests. A coalition of APA and APS must work together on common interests.

Recruit significantly more ethnic minority students to psychology. Data show that we lag behind all other sciences. We need the enrichment in practice, education, and science that diversity brings.

Improve public understanding of psychology as practice and as science. Perception is reality, and the data on the public perception of psychology clearly indicate that it is neither accurate nor helpful for psychologists or the public.

Ludy T. Benjamin Jr., PhD, is a professor of psychology at Texas A&M University.

ALICE F. CHANG, PhD

Question #1:
I would like to see APA play an even more active role in the rebirth of our discipline. Trying as they are, our discipline seems to emerge from these periodic crises of identity stronger and more vital for having undergone the process of redefinition. We need to know more about behavior and to create new opportunities to apply that knowledge. We need to put ourselves a step ahead of the explosion in communications technologies and to anticipate the ways these technologies can be employed in our research, training and profession. We need to better reflect and serve a changing population.

Question #2:
As APA president, I would want to build upon and expand existing efforts to serve professional, research and academic psychologists by:

• Developing and promoting new opportunities and even new identities for psychologists. We have the creativity to apply our knowledge and the scientific method to all areas of living.

• Assuring that our training prepares us to respond to demographic changes in our diverse and aging society. We will then find opportunities to better serve the public at every level and in every domain.

• Establishing mechanisms to create and anticipate new markets instead of reacting to changing markets.

Alice F. Chang, PhD, does private practice, research and consulting in Tucson, Ariz.

GERALD C. DAVISON, PhD

Question #1:
I believe that the importance I attach to science and innovative evidence-based application will benefit both APA and the public. I will use appropriate opportunities to explain and promote my initiatives to the membership and to general audiences. I will make myself available to elaborate upon and discuss the following three and other priorities discussed in the next two Monitor issues in an effort to lead APA to a realization of the promise that psychology has for promoting social good as an empirically based science and profession.

Question #2:

• Pseudoscience sometimes takes the place of psychological science and application in the media. I believe that APA should be assertive in correcting unfounded material presented as fact to the public.

• The changes and advances in our science and applications make the continuing education of psychologists very important. I believe there is room for improvement in APA's system of approval of CE sponsors.

• Implicit in the above is my commitment to maintaining and furthering APA as an organization that can be a professional home, both to those whose primary passions are scientific research and to those whose Muse is the applied.

Gerald C. Davison, PhD, is a professor of psychology at the University of Southern California

NORINE G. JOHNSON, PhD

Question #1:
I will actively listen to and respect each voice.

I would convene two ad hoc councils of leaders from the areas of practice, science, public interest, and education.

1) A Council on Health Care will address the effect upon the public and psychology of the changing health-care system.

2) A Council on Education and Training will address the challenges and crises in education and training outlined in my vision statement.

Both councils will develop and implement action plans containing innovative practice, education/training, and research agendas and models related to public needs and applicable to state and national arenas.

Question #2:

• We must: Address the effect of the changing health-care system on all psychology by fighting the damaging practices of managed care and expanding opportunities for psychology science and practice to meet the public interest needs and national priorities.

• We must: Address challenges to our education and training institutions by repelling threats to academic freedom and faculty size, restoring research funds, demanding the highest quality necessary to insure a future for our students and graduates, and valuing diversity and cultural competency. We must: Promote psychology to the public and in our advocacy efforts at the state and national level.

Norine G. Johnson, PhD, member, APA Board of Directors, private practitioner.

NATHAN N. STOCKHAMER, PhD

Question #1:
My vision is of an APA focused more on the needs of the membership than on internal organizational issues and deliberations. I believe that APA exists solely to advance the field and not as an end in itself. To that end I would work to deploy a greater share of APA's resources to supporting my three primary presidential objectives. First, I would support more aggressive and focused advocacy against managed care. Second, I would support expanded advocacy for funding for psychological research. Third, I would intensify efforts to see that psychology receives a fairer share of support for education.

Question #2:
My three co-equal priorities for what APA as an institution should be doing for its members are:

* Organizing a more aggressive advocacy campaign in the courts and congress against the ravages of managed care on behalf of practice and the public.

* Lobbying more aggressively for funding opportunities for psychological research, which is what has set psychology apart from other mental health professions.

* Aggressively pursuing psychology's fair share of educational support to see that both science and practice continue to have the vigorous educational foundation they require.

Nathan N. Stockhamer, PhD, ABPP, is a psychologist psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City.



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