NMTP Newsletter Volume 2, Number 2Index
Racism Across The Lifespan: CMTP 25th
Anniversary Symposium - Terri A. Betts, Psy.D. Why Are Black Psychologists Leaving the Field? - Merlin Langley, Ph.D. Life Outside the Consulting Room
NMTP SEEKING EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
SECOND ANNUAL MEETING OF NMTP, INC. - PRESIDENTIAL
REPORT ON THE PROGRESS OF THE ORGANIZATION - June 14, 1998 Network for Multicultural Training in Psychology: Program Evaluation - Submitted by Jodie Kliman, Ph.D., October 15, 1998 (flow chart included) Consultation and Education Committee Meeting Notes In Memoriam: Louisa Pinkham Howe, 1915-1998 Highlights from Board of Directors' Meeting, Network for Multicultural Training in Psychology - May 15,1998 Racism Across The Lifespan: CMTP 25th Anniversary
Symposium Terri A. Betts, Psy.D.
CMTP's 25th anniversary symposium was conducted on June 13th and 14th. The symposium was equal parts celebration of 25 years of the internship program and examination of an important social topic. The Center for Multicultural Training in Psychology proudly celebrated 25 years of its APA accredited internship in professional Psychology. The training program, formerly known as the Minority Training Program in Clinical and Community Psychology (MTP), had its formal start at Boston City Hospital (now Boston Medical Center Harrison Avenue Campus) in 1972. The program continues its original mission of providing organized training to advanced doctoral candidates in the Clinical, Counseling, and Community Psychology specialties whose career goals are to work with people of color, low-income and under served populations. The program owes its strength to the "CMTP/MTP Network," a vast array of health, mental health, education, and social service professionals along with community supporters and agencies, who for the last 25 years have devoted their collective energies to the training mission. The topic for the symposium was Racism Across The Lifespan. The symposium’s goals were to identify and examine some of the subtle and not so subtle ways in which racism manifests itself in our daily lives and in the lives of our clients/patients and to promote and facilitate a dialogue about strategies. The symposium began with welcome and introductions
of the Honorary co-chairs of the anniversary weekend Rita Dudley Grant,
Ph.D., M.P.H. and Guy Seymour, Ph.D., Domenic Ciraulo, M.D., Chairman
of Psychiatry, BUSM, and the moderators Carline Jean-Baptiste, Ph.D.
and Herbert Joseph, Jr., Ph.D., M.P.H. Dr. Ciraulo described CMTP as "the jewel of what we have to offer here" and spoke of the teaching and learning of cultural competence as an ongoing process. Dr. Joseph acknowledged Dr. Ciraulo's response to the relatively low level of compensation for interns by bringing the current stipend up to a level competitive with compensation in the region: $17K plus group health insurance option. Dr. Joseph noted that although progress has been made in addressing diversity, there is still a need to look further and deeper at racism. He invoked the name of James Bird, Jr., murdered in Jasper, Texas as a reminder that "racism is alive and well in 1998". Dr. Joseph shared the jmpact of the event on himself as an African-American man and how through the psychological jmpact of racism "we are all affected." Dr. Seymour recalled that the stipend 25 years ago was $3,500. Dr. Dudley Grant expressed that although she was born and living in the Virgin Islands, coming to the Boston conference felt like "coming home", and she felt the MTP/CMTP experience was formative for her identity. Dr. Dudley Grant asserted "We were so far ahead of the curve; we created diversity." "We are all with the choir now” she declared quoting Dr. Joseph. The film Skin
Deep was shown to the general audience. The film depicts students
from Umass Amherst, UC Berkeley, and Texas A&M at a conference retreat
center in Northern California. After the film audience members adjourned
to one of four small group working sessions to discuss the film and
implications of it for particular client populations in a more in-depth
manner. The working groups focused on: racism and children, racism and
adolescents, racism and adults, and racism and elders. The working group on children discussed the impact
of racism across the many contexts in children's lives; schools, peers,
health care access, etc. Population data on poverty from 1994-1995 were
presented to the group as examples of the impact of class and racism
as institutions on children. The percentages of people by racial/ethnic
group living in poverty were as follows: Japanese American 3.4%, White
9.1%, Chinese American 13.3%, African American 27%, Native American
27%, Mexican American 30%, Puerto Rican 33%. Some of the questions the group struggled with were,
"How do we talk to kids, and what do we say? Also how do you intervene
when you encounter racism? The group was challenged to share their earliest
memory of awareness of race. Significantly no one in the room reported
having talked with their parents about their difficult childhood experiences.
The adolescent work group spoke of the need for adolescents
to have their voices heard. Having their stories heard and their voices
recognized was considered critical by the group. The group discussed
the practitioner's responsibility to be ready, willing, and able to
hear different stories their adolescents have to share. There was a
discussion of the different ways that organizations can honor adolescents
and their stories, and it was suggested that organizations should offer
structure and teaching. The notion of intra race racism, and the need
to teach respect for one's culture and one another was examined as well.
With regard to violence the group emphasized tough love, setting limits,
and offering choices. The adult group dealt with racism in a variety of contexts.
The moderators helped the members to contribute topics of interest.
Among the groups expressed interests were intra racism, professionals
and racism, gender, class and race, power of words e.g. words such as
"minority". The group discussed the meaning of being different
and notions of power. The need for people to confront racism was stressed.
The feeling in the room was emotional and sometimes
intense. Group members shared their professional and personal experiences
as well as their feelings and ways of solving and dealing with them.
The elderly work group shared experiences of racism and the elderly through personal and professional narratives. The group reflected on how an elderly man of color's developmental task (in Erik Erikson's terms) of a life review search for integrity and self acceptance would be hindered by the consequences of racism large and small. The group discussed how the small but more pervasive acts create the cumulative effect of what Chester Pierce called micro-aggressions daily over a life span. The group contemplated how to integrate and help elderly clients find integrity in the face of this impact of racism over the life cycle. The group ended with a reflection on how to tolerate the ambiguity of looking at the larger picture of racism and nonetheless, move, act, think, talk in the moment. One member proposed "perhaps we can add micro affirmations to a world full of micro aggressions." Why Are
Black Psychologists Leaving the Field? Merlin
Langley, Ph.D.
Author's Note: In 1992, I graduated with M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in clinical psychology from The Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida. From 1992-1997, I held faculty appointments as Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor in the applied master's program in counseling and psychology at Lesley College, Cambridge, MA. From 1992-1994, I was also a post-doctoral clinical fellow and instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. I have over the years held several clinical appointments in the public and private sectors as well. In 1997, I left the field of psychology. More precisely, I decided to change the practice setting in which I would teach and conduct research in psychology. Presently, I am a black psychologist who holds a graduate appointment as an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work at the Florida A & M University in Tallahassee, Florida. The focus of this article is to bring attention to a trend I have noted: the departure of black psychologists to other health and mental health disciplines. I believe the departure of black psychologists from the field of organized psychology represents a highly significant trend that has the potential to adversely affect the science and the practice of psychology in the 21st century. In particular, I believe that the departure of black psychologists from the field of psychology will result in many of the theories related to human development being unexamined and as a result unchallenged with respect to their inherent cultural bias. With respect to blacks, I believe that the departure of black psychologists from the field of psychology will have tremendous implications for how people of color are psychologically described, understood and treated in America. We must remember that over the past five (5) decades, black psychologists have provided the knowledge, skills and leadership to challenge many of the racist theories and laws that have historically undermined the psychological well-being of blacks in America (Akbar, 1981; Azibo, 1996; Baldwin, 1980b; Clark, 1954;Guthrie, 1998; Jones, 1997; Welsing, 1970). I have concluded that there are 4 factors that account for the above trend: (1) the education and training of doctoral psychologists; (2) black racial identity and role conflict (3) the recent attacks on affirmative action at predominately white colleges and universities (PWCU), and (4) increased enrollments of minority students at historically black colleges and universities (HBCU). I will address each of these below. Education And Training Of Black PsychologistsAccording to the National Research Council (NRC) blacks
remain significantly underrepresented in earning the doctorate in various
scientific disciplines in general and in psychology in particular. In
1996, 3,340 doctoral degrees were awarded in the field of psychology.
However, blacks earned only 146 doctoral degrees in the field of psychology. In other words, in 1996 blacks earned only
4.8 percent of the total 3,340 doctoral degrees awarded in psychology.
A plausible explanation for this poor outcome is the time required to
obtain the doctoral degree in psychology. The average age of a black
Ph.D. recipient was 40.2 years compared to 34.7 years for white Americans.
Blacks on average took 15.3 years to earn a doctorate after receiving
their bachelor's degree. Whites on average took 11.1 years. Another
credible explanation for this poor state of affairs is the amount of
economic investment that is required to earn the doctorate. Recent data
from the U.S. Bureau of the Census (1995) indicate that whites possess
far greater wealth for financing higher education than blacks. Specifically,
in 1993 the median household net worth in the United States was $4,418
for blacks and $45,000 .for whites, respectively. Thus, it is reasonable
to assume that the disparate economic burdens on blacks relative to
whites account for much of the difference in the earning of the doctorate. Finally, another likely explanation for the appalling outcome is related to black students' perception of the relevance of the discipline of psychology to black liberation. Last year, I conducted a pilot study on a sample (n= 25) of black psychologists (recruited through informal networking) who were educated and trained at PWCU. Participants reported: that they were mildly to moderately dissatisfied with (1) their education and training as psychologists; (2) the absence of minority faculty; (3) the limited exposure to information focusing on the biopsychosocial experiences of racial and/or ethnic minority groups, and (4) the historical lack of a contextual or ecological approach to the study of the individual. Participants' self-reports are consistent with the findings of several national American Psychological Association surveys conducted over the past two decades (Bemal and Padilla, 1982; Betancourt and Lopez, 1993; Mio and Morris, 1990; Wyatt and Parham, 1985; Hill, 1997). Notwithstanding, the NRC reported that 53.8 percent of all blacks who earned doctorates in 1996 planned on a career in academia. Black Racial Identity and Role ConflictDubois (1969) asserted in his classic work Souls of Black Folks that with respect to their racial identity blacks had to develop a double consciousness (one black and one white) in order to survive in America. I submit that with respect to their professional identity, black psychologists have to work through the above developmental conflicts if they are to survive or indeed thrive in psychology departments at PWCU. In other words, as blacks with appointments in psychology departments, they must confront and resolve the following problem of representation: are they psychologists who happen to be black or are they black psychologists committed to the struggle for black liberation. According to Gates (1997) the "problem of representation" significantly shapes the lives of blacks in general and black professionals in particular. To gain some insight into the professional activities of blacks who were awarded a doctorate in psychology, I asked the participants in my study about their postgraduate experience as "new professiona1" (i.e., less than 10 years with doctorate) in psychology departments at PWCU. Participants stated that with the passage of time they began to experience psychological conflict related to their racial identity and their role in psychology departments. Specifically, participants reported experiencing: (1) stress associated with being "new professionals" and the "only" minority faculty in their psychology departments and (2) emotional distress related to threats to their cultural values, racial identity and perceived competence. For example, participants reported that they were questioned about their knowledge and objectivity related to various psychological theories because they tended to emphasize some of the racist underpinnings of those canons in psychology. Participants also stated that they were questioned about the quality and relevance of their research programs because their scholarship tended to focus on the psychosocial experiences of minorities and other oppressed cultural groups in America. Recent Attacks on Affirmative Action at PWCURecent attacks on affirmative action have contributed to some black scholars' reexamination of their racial identity and their commitment to working in PWCUs. Participants reported experiencing moderate career dissatisfaction related to their dual role within psychology departments: to be the "expert on minority affairs" while at the same time expected outside of the departments to publish research in refereed journals focusing on the experiences of the majority population. Specifically, participants stated that the abovementioned event and its frequency motivated them to begin to reexamine their racial identity, self-concepts, professional interests and research programs. In addition, participants reported that several psychosocial factors have influenced their decision to reexamine their racial identity and commitment to the field of psychology: (1) they were, as "new professionals" mature and seasoned enough (mean age = 45 years old) to understand that race continued to matter in the academy; (2) their minority status in psychology departments made it very difficult to establish relationships with mentors; (3) the opportunity to mentor the next generation of black scholars was highly unlikely given the racial background of most students in psychology programs, and (4) managing stress and the maintenance of psychological well-being at this juncture in their lives and careers (many had other careers before becoming psychologists) was important. Participants reported that as a result of the above cultural and institutional factors they decided to explore career opportunities in related professional fields (e.g., public health, social work, journalism, and higher education administration) at HBCU s. Increased Enrollment Of Minority Students At Historically Black Colleges And Universities (HBCUs)In 1900, 95% of blacks lived in the South. By 1970, only 50% of blacks lived in the South. Presently, 54% of blacks are living in the South. During the first half of the 90s the South gained 386,000 black migrants from the North, which in turn gained only 233,000 from the South (United states Bureau of Census). The above phenomena is described in the sociological literature as the "new great migration to the South. " Population experts assert that many blacks are choosing to return to the South to reclaim their communities, reconnect with families, and to escape drugs and gangs prevalent in the North. Further that many Blacks' perception of the South has changed from it being a region once buried in repressive, racist and segregationist practices to a place with a more integrated work, political and racial climate. The abovementioned demographic shifts are also reflected in the recent enrollment patterns of blacks in higher education. In 1996, there were 1,499,439 blacks enrolled in colleges and universities in the United States, an all-time high. The number of blacks enrolled in higher education is up 1.8 percent from 1995. And there has been an increase of 21 percent since 1990. Blacks now make up 10.5 percent of all 14.3 million college and university students in the United States. On the other hand, white enrollments in higher education dropped by 0.8 percent from 1995 to 1996 (U.S. Department of Education). Nevertheless, nationwide in 1997 the Department of Education statistics show that 13.3 percent of all adult African Americans have a college degree compared to 24.6 percent of adult whites. Equally important, a growing number of black students are attending one of the 103 HBCUs located in the South. Increasingly, HBCUs are out-recruiting the Ivy League for the nation's top black students and have developed professional schools whose graduates are courted by the country's biggest corporations. For example, in 1997, Florida A &M University (FAMU) graduated the largest number of blacks with the bachelors degree in the United States (Tanner, 1997). As a result, FAMU was named the "College of the Year ." (Times and Princeton Review, 1997). Additionally, recent budget cuts in higher education and the recent attack on affirmative action have contributed to an increase in black enrollment at HBCUs. In particular the passage of Proposition 209 and the elimination of affirmative action admission programs at the University of California and the Hopwood decision in Texas have had a chilling effect on black college student enrollment nationwide at PWCUs. In contrast, Mississippi posted the largest increase in black college enrollments in the 1995-1996 period. In fact, black enrollments were up significantly throughout the South. Black enrollments increased sharply in Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maryland and South Carolina. Increased black college enrollment in the South is attributed to the fact that in recent years the southern States have allocated more resources to predominately black primary and secondary schools. Further, many southern states are under federal court order to desegregate their higher education system. As a result, many states have adopted financial incentive programs to attract black students to the South. I believe that the above documented shift, with increased Student enrollments at southern HBCUs, has contributed significantly to the departure of black psychologists from mainstream psychology departments at PWCUs. Participants in my study stated that they "wanted to be able to be in a position to help nurture and develop the next generation of black scholars." In addition, I think that the departure of black psychologists from mainstream psychology is partly attributable to the fact that other health and mental health disciplines tend to have an ecological approach as their conceptual framework for understanding human behavior. According to Sarason (1988) the "field of psychology is so rooted in the study of the individual that it lacked any appreciation of the social and cultural contexts in which people lived" (p. 52). I would like to note that the ecological approach is a theoretical framework that is commensurate with the cultural background and world view of many minority professionals. I submit that those scientific fields that have the ecological approach as a central component of their profession are likely to increasingly attract the interests of minority professionals in general and black psychologists in particular. In conclusion, the purpose of this article was to bring attention to an important trend in the career development of black psychologists, and to stimulate dialogue between minority and majority psychologists. Data drawn from personal interviews and government sources suggest that there are several cultural and socioeconomic actors contributing to a significant demographic shift occurring amongst blacks in the United States. Hopefully, the information provided in this article will contribute to the current discourse focusing on the recruitment and retention of blacks in higher education in general and in psychology in particular. Please feel free to contact me or write to the staff of the NMTP newsletter with your comments or concerns. ReferencesAkbar, N. (1981) Mental disorders among African-Americans. Black Books Bulletin, 7, 2, 18-25. Azibo,
D. A. (1996) African psychology: A historical perspective and related
commentary. African World Press.
Baldwin, J. A. (1980) The psychology of oppression. In M. Ashanti and A. Vandi (Eds. ), Contemporary Black Thought. Beverly Hills, Sage Publications. Bemal, M. E. & Padilla, A. M. (1982) Status of minority curricula and training in clinical psychology. American Psychologist, 37, (7), 780-787. Dubois, W. E. B. (1989) An ABC of color. International Publishers, Inc. Gates, H. L. (1997) Thirteen ways of looking at a black man. Random House. Guthrie, R. V. (1998) Even the rat was white: A historical view of psychology. 2nd Edition. Allyn and Bacon. Hill, C. C. I. (1997) Cultural malpractice: The growing obsolescence of psychology with a changing U.S. population. American Psychologist, 52,642-651. Jones, J. M. (1997) Prejudice and racism. 2nd edition. McGraw Hill, Inc. Mio, J.S. & Morris, D. R. (1990) Cross-cultural issues in psychology training pro-grams: An invitation for discussion. American Psychologist, 21,434-441. Sarason, S. (1988) The making of an American Psychologist. San Francisco:Jossey-Bass. Welsing, F. C. (1970) The Cress theory of color confrontation. Washington, D.C.: C-R Publishers. Wyan, G. E. & Parham, W. D. (1985) The inclusion of culturally sensitive materials in graduate school ad training programs. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, and Practice, 22, 461-468. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Merlin R. Langley, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Social Work, Florida A & M University, Talahasee, Florida, 32307-4100. Life Outside the Consulting RoomWith this issue of NMTP News, we institute a column
at the suggestion of Mabel Lam and Dyanne London. In this column, we
will highlight the activities, interests, and passions that Network
members pursue outside the realm of clinical, academic and research
areas. We start with Shani Dowd's lifelong passion for music and the
success of her group. We invite members to submit stories or ideas for
future columns. Newsletter
Committee Members Here's the scoop! The Sistahs of the Yam are
an all-women's show band. We've been together for nearly two years now.
The members are Shani Dowd, on guitar and vocals; Marcia Gomes on keyboard
and vocals; Laurie Goldsmith on guitar and vocals, Ife Franklin, lead
vocals; Donyne Cowan on bass, and Kera M. Washington on congas, percussion
and vocals. Our " Adjunct Yam" is Angelamia Bachmein on Drums. (She plays with several groups: hence the adjunct
status. ) Marcia and I got to know one another when we played with a
jazz band. When we left that ensemble, we decided to start another project
that would be fun, funky and would be anchored by a spiritual awareness.
We gradually collected the Yams: like minded fellow travelers. The name
of the group came from a book by bell hooks on African American women
and recovery. We all like Yams, and Yams are a truly international vegetable,
eaten everywhere by ordinary people. The first year we rehearsed, gathered
material and learned who we each were, what gifts we brought to the
table, and how to work together. It began to feel like we were never
gong to get out of Marcia's living room! This is often the hardest transition
for a band and most bands never make it as far as their first gig. We
were luckier: we had our first gig the last week of September, 1997,
at Ryles as part of a showcase of artists, performing on the same bill
with poets, other musicians, rappers, etc. Thank the spirit, we were
well received! This was a great boost to our energy, and we followed
up in November with our first Yam show also at Ryles.
It has both humbled us and amazed us how this project just took off!
We originally planned to gig about once a month, and keep working
on material. We have written some of our own material, and we plan to
write even more. We hope to ultimately be performing mostly original
material, but we were getting so many gigs, we couldn't crank out good
originals that fast. Our original tunes, like Kiss My Black Ass,
Amazon Island and Puerto Rico have been very well received,
which is very encouraging. We have a great time on stage together: every
gig is a chance to party! Sometime our rehearsal get a little chaotic
because we start playing: riffing on songs we know, making up jingles,
doing call and response vocal jams, and other musical play. Then we
have to stop and get back to work. Last month a producer from Detroit
came to see us and hired us to open for Chaka Khan for an AIDS benefit
that they will be doing in Detroit in 1999. Are we ecstatic! Can we
Yell "YES!" so you know we are high as a kite. Now we're getting
ready for the next level. On the 26th of Sept. were recorded, to get
material for a high quality demo, and we videotaped. All of this was
to prepare our PR package. We're hoping to come to the attention of
some of the big national music festivals, like the Michigan Women's
Music Festival. It has been great trip so far and I can't wait to see
where the Yams take me! Shani Background on Shani Dowd Shani Dowd is a primary supervisor and teaches the core seminar on cross-cultural psychotherapy for CMTP. Shani's affiliation with CMTP began in 1975, when it was called the Minority Training Program (MTP). She was first a site supervisor at Roxbury Comprehensive Community Health Center. She's been part of the faculty since 1981. So how did Shani's passion for music develop? "I came from a musical family, and started singing jazz standards with my two brothers when I was about 7 or 8. We were my father's back-up singers. My father was a jazz singer and my mother sang and played both piano and violin. Despite the fact that we were too poor to afford music lessons or formal training, there was always music in the house. I finally had the chance to start formal voice training in my freshman year of high school. Music became the way I dealt with stress and processed my experiences growing up female, black and gay in the segregated south. There was not much opportunity to choose music as a profession (and not have to either starve or end up teaching a bunch of ungrateful six-year-olds piano for the rest of my life) so I opted for my second love, people-watching, as a way to make a living. I was lucky that it paid reasonably well. "Though I went to grad school, I continued performing, first as a folk singer, accompanying myself on guitar (I knew only about 3 chords), later playing with a bluegrass band. It helped me earn money to support myself, but also gave me respite from my a1l-white educational environment. I started taking formal music lessons and playing electric guitar in the early 70's. I've played with a lot of different bands over the years. "I met my band mate, Marcia Gomes, in 1994, when we were both playing with a jazz ensemble, Mashandi Jhaz. When that group disbanded after a couple of years, we decided we wanted to start a different project: one that would be funky, fun and grounded in a strong spiritual connection. We were blessed to find the other Yams who brought incredible gifts and the right kind of positive energy to the group. Above all, we have a good time. Sometimes our rehearsals degenerate into musical-laugh riots! Out of some of those "play times" come some of our original tunes, like Amazon Island and Puerto Rico. "The energy that I get from playing, writing and performing music is informed both by my work and my personal life. It's also a repository for ideas, images and concepts that I'm working out in my professional life. Like a tune I'm working on which features images of Asian women as invisible "others". That image came partly from a paper I'm working on about identity and the ways in which the government defines ethnic identities. Asians were legally identified in the south in the 1800s as "colored". They legally did not exist. So in this song I'm kind of exploring what that would be like: to literally not exist. "One of the things I have always believed is that one should never let your career become your life. Developing a passion that has nothing to do with psychology or mental health, and that really excites you, is important. I think it really has a lot to do with my not burning out, and the fact that I still love what I do professionally." So this is how Shani lives out the advice she gives to CMTP interns ! NMTP Logo Contest1.) Take a moment to look at the current NMTP logo,
on the masthead of NMTP Notes. 2.) Imagine a logo of your own creation: A design that graphically captures the ideals and aspirations of an organization committed to the culturally competent practice of psychology. 3.) Put your creation down on paper, and send it to NMTP Logo Contest, Post Office Box 274, Brookline, MA 02246-0002. 4.) All contestants will be acknowledged, and the winner announced, in a forthcoming issue of NMTP Notes. 5.) The logo will appear on NMTP Notes, NMTP stationery, promotional materials for the Consultation and Education Bureau, and all official documents of the Network for Multicultural Training in Psychology, Inc.
NMTP SEEKING EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
NMTP’s roots
are in the informal network which has sustained the Center for Multicultural
Training in Psychology, which pioneered the culturally competent practice
of psychology twenty-five years ago, and whose graduates are among the
leaders in this field. NMTP
draws on this heritage to assert our leadership, as we prepare to offer
consultation and education based on legitimate, time-tested expertise
at applying ideas of diversity and multiculturalism to professional
practice. Up to now,
the work has come from the voluntary efforts of our members. As we prepare to implement a professional Consultation and Education
Bureau, we recognize the need for a paid part-time Executive Director
who will coordinate and follow through on the details of the enterprise,
and represent NMTP to clients and providers of Consultation and Education
services. We are looking
for a clinical professional with demonstrated commitment to the culturally
competent practice of psychology, as well as interest and expertise
in the entrepreneurial, management, and financial challenges involved
in launching a Consultation and Education Bureau.
S/he will need to have connections with leaders in the field,
both within and beyond the MTP/CMTP professional network.
We envision
this job growing with the organization.
Starting part-time (one day a week), the Executive Director will
take on more responsibilities as s/he brings in more revenue to the
organization, from grants and from Consultation and Education service
contracts. The Executive
Director will work closely with the Board of Directors, which meets
from six to eight times a year in Boston.
Location in Boston is not necessarily a requirement, given contemporary
electronic means of communication.
The Executive Director should plan at least one visit to Boston
per year, to attend the organization’s Annual Meeting early in June. Please send expressions of interest, together with Curriculum Vitae, to Network for Multicultural Training in Psychology, Inc., Post Office Box 274, Brookline, MA 02446-0002. Please respond before January 15, 1998. From the President...
My thanks
to the Board of Directors for the confidence expressed in their decision
to elect me President of the Network for Multicultural Training in Psychology. I hope that my service will reward their confidence. The President's Report by my predecessor, Dr. T. Leon
Nicks, can be found in this issue.
It reflects our success in securing a solid foundation for our
nonprofit organization, and our progress toward development of a Consultation
and Education Bureau, intended to promote the culturally competent practice
of psychology directly, by providing appropriate consultation and training,
and indirectly, by generating revenue to support psychology internships,
fellowships, and grants. The work so far has been carried by a small group of
Board members, and a few volunteers, notably Terri Betts, Shani Dowd,
Alice LoCicero, and Alicia Lucksted.
As we expand our activities, we need to include more NMTP members
to volunteer their efforts. I
set the priority for my term of office to draw moree volunteers in to
NMTP activities. Many of you have indicated your interest in
volunteering on your membership application or renewal forms. You should be hearing from us soon, acknowledging
your willingness to volunteer and offering some possibilities for action. Communication among NMTP members with email will soon
be enhanced by a mailing list/listserv, enabling each of us to communicate
with all of us by the stroke of a key.
If your email address has changed, or if you are not sure whether
or not we have your email address, please give our Membership Committee
chairperson, Alicia Lucksted, your address.
Alicia's address is <<aluckste@umpsy.ab.umb.edu>>. NMTP members recently received a letter from our new
Clerk, Dr. Roxana Llerena-Quinn, asking for nominations to elect a replacement
for retired Board member Dr. Melvin (Mike) Rosenthal. This is the procedure set forth in our By-Laws for nomination of
candidates for Board of Directors.
We were not as well-organized for the previous election; we neglected
the step of soliciting nominations from the membership.
We apologize for this oversight, and hope that members who might
have been interested in serving then took this recent opportunity to
step forward to nominate themselves. New Officers Elected
At the September 11, 1998, Board meeting, the following
Officers were elected: President - David Trimble, Ph.D. Vice President - Mabel Sau-Ching Lam, Ph.D. Treasurer: Catherine Wong, M.Ed. Clerk: Roxana Llerena-Quinn, Ph.D.
SECOND ANNUAL MEETING OF NMTP, INC. PRESIDENTIAL
REPORT ON THE PROGRESS OF THE ORGANIZATION
June 14, 1998 Welcome
to the Second Annual Meeting of NMTP which we are pleased to hold in
conjunction with the 25th Anniversary Reunion of the Center For Multicultural
Training in Psychology. Little did we know in 1972 that we would approach
these two events with such sterling accomplishments. In
the program evaluation at last year's annual meeting, we recognized
the limitations of membership dues and related fund raising activities
in supporting the training of culturally competent psychologists and
searched for strategic directions to accelerate generation of significant
funding to achieve our many organizational goals and objectives. After
much productive discussion, it was agreed to build on the Network's
25 years of knowledge development and experiences to establish a program
to offer consultation and education services, for adequate compensation,
in human service, educational, corporate and government settings. Our
discussion included initial ideas about the conceptualization, marketing
and implementation of such a program. It was further agreed that the
existing NMTP C&E Committee, consisting of Catherine Wong, Mabel
Lam, Shani Dowd and Alice LoCicero, would be broadened in membership
and charged with further development of this concept. A preliminary
report of that Committee appeared in the March 1998 issue of NMTP Notes
and further elaboration will be presented for action at this annual
meeting. We thank the C &E Committee for its excellent and timely
report. While
the C&E Program development constituted the major accomplishment
for the second year, other notable activities were: 1-
Continuing development of NMTP Notes as a newsletter of high quality
with a distribution to more than 350 students, professionals and organizations.
The newsletter includes scholarly articles on the challenges of culturally
competent practice as well as information on our organization and CMTP.
We congratulate Doctors Betts, LoCicero, Gibney,
Langley and Trimble for
their dedication to this superb effort. 2-
Printing and distribution of an organizational brochure and establishment
of a postal address for NMTP (Post Office Box 274, Brookline, MA 02446-0002). 3-
Creation of a much needed computerized membership data base and associated
mailing lists. 4-
Sponsorship support of The 1997 Conference of the Graduate Students
for Multiculturalism in Mental Health and the CMTP 25th Anniversary
Reunion. 5-
Conduct of an election to replace three vacancies on the Board of Directors,
two created through normal rotation and one to replace Dr. Kathleen
Gibney who resigned in February, 1998 for personal reasons. 6-
Acceptance by the President, NMTP of an invitation to represent the organization on the NECON (New England Coalition for
Health Promotion and Disease Prevention) Task Force on Cancer Control
and Prevention which is developing a long range Regional Strategic Plan
for discussion at an October, 1998 Brandeis University conference and
for eventual presentation to the New England Governors' Conference and
the Caucus of the New England State Legislatures. 7-
Election of board officers at the September, 1997 Board Meeting - (
Leon Nicks, President; Kathleen Gibney, Vice President; Cathy Wong,
Treasurer, and David Trimble, Clerk). Among additional items that should be given priority
consideration during the coming year are: -Development of a strong Membership
Committee to increase and retain membership -Enhanced
coalition building with other appropriate organizations/agencies -Consideration of a part time
staff person to manage the increased administrative work load of NMTP.
All of these are relevant to the C&E initiative. In summary, we invite membership support of the formation
of a network of clinical, research and educational professionals who
are NMTP members and who are well qualified to offer consultation and
education services to human service, educational, corporate and governmental
entities, disseminating knowledge and skills designed to make a difference
in the lives of the people served by such client organizations. Implementation
of this initiative would assist NMTP in accomplishing a number of its
organizational objectives such as generating revenue for substantial
sustained scholarships and grants to support the training of culturally
competent psychologists. It would promote membership participation in
the organization as well as enhance our overall mission of public advocacy,
education and training. We strongly urge your support of this initiative
that seems so vital to NMTP and its mission. T. Leon Nicks, Ph.D. President.
Network for Multicultural Training in Psychology:
Program Evaluation
Submitted by Jodie Kliman, Ph.D. October
15, 1998 Background The following is the 1997-1998 program evaluation for
the Network for Multicultural Training in Psychology (NMTP). NMTP, a
non-profit organization, represents the formalization of the loose-knit
network that has clustered around the Minority Training Program (MTP),
founded in 1973 by Dr. Guy Seymour, and
later re-named the Center for Multicultural Training in Psychology
(CMTP). The original, informal network is comprised of several hundred
members, including: current and former MTP/CMTP staff, interns, field-site
supervisors from the various agencies and hospitals where interns have
trained over the years; Boston City Hospital employees who collaborated
with the program; and mental health professionals from around the greater
Boston area who are concerned with multicultural and anti-racist mental
health services and training. NMTP, which alone is being evaluated in
these pages, is a subset of the larger, informal network which includes
only dues-paying members of the formal Network. In 1993, CMTP held a 20th anniversary reunion
and conference, which attracted network members from around the country
and beyond its shores. NMTP was conceived at that reunion as a verhicle
for drawing more effectively on the intellectual and financial resources
of the informal, CMTP-centered network. After the 20th anniversary
reunion, CMTP director Dr. Herbert Joseph convened a Professional Advisory
Board for CMTP. When NMTP was incorporated as a non-profit organization,
that Advisory Board constituted itself as the Board of Directors of
NMTP. The Board’s first President was Dr. K. Dawkins-Brickhouse. Dr.
Leon Nicks was NMTP’s second President; he was President at the time
of this evaluation but has since been succeeded by Dr. David Trimble.
NMTP attained 501(c)(3) status in 1997. When NMTP was incorporated,
its Board members relinquished their advisory relationship to CMTP and
turned their focus to the broader mission of furthering the cause of
multicultural, culturally competent training and consultation in psychology
for mental health providers. The Evaluation
Assembly Following an earlier MTP/CMTP tradition, the Network
for Multicultural Training in Psychology’s annual evaluation, on June
14, 1998, took the form of a network assembly. The evaluation assembly
was designed to include as many non-Board members of the Network as
possible, so as to have broader representation than at last year’s annual
meeting, which only Board members attended. The assembly was held over
breakfast at Boston Medical Center on the morning after a CMTP-sponsored
day-long conference on racism across the life cycle, which NMTP financed
and co-sponsored. The previous night’s torrential rains, flooding, and
power outages reduced the assembly’s numbers to approximately 20 people.
Attending were: NMTP Board members (President Leon Nicks, Ph.D.,
Mike Rosenthal, Ph.D., David Trimble, Ph.D., Cathy Wong, M.Ed.);
Board members-elect (Roxana Llerena-Quinn, Ph.D. and Mabel Sau-Ching
Lam, Ph.D.); CMTP core faculty members (Director Herbert Joseph, Ph.D.
and Mari Bennasar, Psy.D).; Cross-Cultural Psychology seminar faculty (Shani Dowd, L.C.S.W.);
family therapy faculty (Jodie Kliman, Ph.D., Roxana-Llerena-Quinn, Ph.D,.
and David Trimble, Ph.D., the latter two also board members); 1997-98
CMTP interns (Yu-Wen Chu, Denise Daniels, Patrick Latham, and Maria
Vasquez) former MTP/CMTP directors (Guy Seymour, Ph.D. and G. Rita Dudley,
Ph.D.); and the business manager for the Boston Medical Center’s Division
of Psychiatry (Michael Dixon). Jodie Kliman, Ph.D., coordinator of the
family therapy faculty and facilitator of an earlier MTP program evaluation,
facilitated the assembly. The evaluation meeting was planned for the two hours
preceding the annual meeting of the NMTP Board of Directors. The evaluation
meeting began late, in part because of attendees’ flood-related difficulties.
Following MTP/CMTP tradition, the meeting began with a “network retribalization,”
in which network members shared what had originally brought them to
the NMTP network and what kept them connected to the network. Most described
themselves as part of the MTP/CMTP informal network well before NMTP
was conceived and incorporated; these members did not particularly differentiate
between the formal network, NMTP, and the informal network that has
clustered around the Program for decades. The retribalization phase
generated some of the descriptions of NMTP’s strenghts, as described
below. The participants shared a moment of silence to acknowledge
the cherished memory of deceased network members, acknowledging that
“we all stand on the shoulders of those who precede us.” These network
members included CMTP graduates and staff, mentors, and members of the
families of CMTP staff: Manuel Teruel, Larry Bird, Shango Johnson, Carolyn
Attneave, and, in 1998, Charles Martin and Charles Pinderhughes. As we made the transition to the evaluation section
of the meeting, Dr. Herbert Joseph, director of CMTP and member ex officio of the NMTP board, provided a flow chart (attached)
to clarify the relationship among NMTP, CMTP, and the Boston University
School of Medicine Division of Psychiatry. This flow chart is of particular
value because, as Dr. Joseph articulated and as the content and process
of the meeting itself reflected, there is considerable confusion as
to the distinctions and boundaries between these bodies. This confusion
is not surprising, since NMTP is a product of the informal network that
has clustered form many years around MTP/CMTP, and many members, as
reported, do not seem to distinguish between their informal and longer-standing
relationship with CMTP and their formal (dues-paying) membership in
the non-profit organization, NMTP. The obvious similarity in names undoubtedly
adds to the conflation of the two separate but intertwined entities. Attendees were then asked to begin the evaluation process
by sharing their perceptions of NMTP’s strengths as well as their concerns
for the NMTP network. Some of their responses involved the CMTP program
as well as (and, in some cases, instead of) NMTP, reflecting the vague
distinctions many network members make between the program, CMTP, and
its informal network, and the formal network of NMTP.
Participants offered suggestions for strengthening the network
and its effectiveness in supporting multicultural training in psychology.
Participants gave moving descriptions of their finding in the network
a rare place they could call a professional home. Participants’
Evaluation of NMTP NMTP’s Strengths, as Presented by
Participants
NMTP provides a
fiscal and organizational vehicle to carry CMTP and its mission of providing
culturally competent training in psychology into the future. Doing so
is highly valued in that it provides CMTP with a degree of autonomy
and support that is essential for a program whose work is easily marginalized
by the professional mainstream.
NMTP is to be congratulated
for its broader mission of taking its multicultural psychology message
beyond the CMTP program to the wider human services community, as evidenced
by the conference it co-sponsored with CMTP the previous day. This mission
has the strong support of network members. NMTP’s small Board
of directors is remarkably committed and dedicated. They are an energetic,
accomplished, and highly diverse group (including the President at the
time of the evaluation, Dr. Leon Nicks, who was noted at the meeting
to be the first African American graduate of Boston University’s doctoral
program in clinical psychology, and who blazed a trail for all the psychologists
of color who came after him). This small group has been a great support
to NMTP, has established a newsletter which is both informative and
community-building, and is now branching out into new areas of multicultural
training in psychology. (Dr. Nicks has since stepped down as President
and Dr. David Trimble has taken on that office.)
The Network provides
a safe haven for mental health professionals of color in the midst of
an unwelcoming professional environment. NMTP is supportive to psychologists
and mental health professionals of all racial and cultural backgrounds
who are committed to competent multicultural work in psychology. NMTP
provides a context in which its members can feel affirmed and self-affirming,
rather than chronically marginalized.
NMTP has non-profit
status as a 501(c)(3) organization, which gives it considerable fiscal
flexibility.
The formal NMTP
network and the larger informal MTP/CMTP network on which it draws includes
several hundred psychologists and other mental health professionals,
students, and community members who are highly multicultural, geographically
far-flung (including beyond the borders of the U.S.), and who have many
resources and talents on which NMTP can draw. Historically, the dedication,
energy, and creativity of the network has seen the MTP/CMTP program
through very difficult times and now is a vital resource for NMTP.
NMTP is beginning
to move into offering culturally competent continuing education and
other training to mental health providers and trainers outside of its
relationship to CMTP’s psychology internship program. NMTP’s financial
support of CMTP’s 25th reunion conference is one example
of such work.
The network model
allows NMTP to draw on the creativity, energy, and knowledge base of
its members. The network is a rich source of culturally competent mentors, role models,
and colleagues with a wide and rich range of expertise.
Concerns about NMTP, as Presented
by Participants
NMTP tends to rely
on the ideas and labors of local network members, overloading them and
under-utilizing other members. We need to think about how to make more
effective and creative use of geographically distant, but committed,
network members.
NMTP’s Board is
quite small and labor-intensive. A larger Board is needed to distribute
and carry the work more effectively and efficiently.
We need to be able
to clarify what it means “to take care of our own.”
There is significant
confusion among network members about the relationship between, and
the distinctions between, CMTP and NMTP.
NMTP needs more
visibility in the larger mental health community.
Interns reported
that they did not have sufficient access to NMTP network members, who
could offer them such rich and varied training experiences. They also
reported that they were not sufficiently oriented regarding the nature
and purpose of NMTP nor the relationship between their training program,
CMTP, and NMTP until fairly late in their training year.
Participants’ Recommendations for
NMTP
Make better use
of geographically distant network members through a) caucuses and b)
inviting network members in other cities to sponsor NMTP-sponsored or
co-sponsored Continuing Education events.
Enlarge the NMTP
Board to include several more members who are willing and able to take
on significant work loads..
Make NMTP more visible
by sponsoring a dinner at the APA conference in Boston next year.
Add to NMTP’s visibility
and usefulness by setting up an email listserve and website through
B.U. Michael Dixon offered to take responsibility for setting
up these services.
Several recommendations
clustered around the issue of making NMTP more useful and accessible
to each cohort of interns at CMTP. These recommendations served a dual
purpose: both to enrich intern training and to give more peripheral
network members opportunities to participate more actively in the network. Invite NMTP network
members to volunteer as clinical supervisors and/or to offer research
consultation or serve as dissertation readers to interns, thereby increasing
interns’ access to culturally competent mentors. Invite NMTP members
to offer Grand Rounds-type presentations to the interns. These presentations
could be open to other NMTP members or hospital staff as well. Consider linking
the NMTP Consultation and Education Bureau to CMTP training and supervision. Early each training
year, new interns should be oriented to NMTP, its relationship to CMTP,
and their automatic membership in NMTP. Dr. Guy Seymour generously produced
a check to pay for all five 1997-98 interns’ membership at the meeting
and pledged to do so for all future CMTP interns. Invite interns to
attend NMTP Board meetings, either as a group or with a representative
attending ex officio.
Facilitator’s
Evaluation of NMTP
I can comfortably support all of the participants’
comments about NMTP’s strengths and weaknesses and their recommendations
for the future. In the interest of brevity, I will not repeat those
comments in this section. I will, however, add some additional comments
and recommendations, which are based on my own participant-observation
of the network assembly and on my participation in NMTP and CMTP. (As
an active participant in both bodies, I neither pretend to nor believe
in “objectivity.”) In addition, I will offer some observations about
the evaluation itself and make recommendations for future evaluations.
Facilitator’s Additional Comments about
NMTP Strengths
The NMTP Notes,
NMTP’s newsletter, is an important asset to and contribution by the
network. It keeps NMTP members, and potential members, informed about
NMTP members and NMTP doings and provides a useful vehicle for sharing
ideas about culturally competent, multicultural, and anti-racist psychological
practice, training, and research. The Newsletter could be included on
the web-page proposed at the evaluation assembly.
Participants commented
on the dedication and hard work of Board members. I would add that many
network members have, for many years, offered their volunteer labors
to MTP/CMTP and would surely be equally available to NMTP for similar
reasons. They are NMTP’s greatest (if underutilized) resource.
Network members’
history with and loyalty to CMTP ensures that many network members,
if approached individually or collectively, would gladly involve themselves
more fully with NMTP, which is generally perceived as a “daughter organization,”
or even the same as, CMTP.
Facilitator’s Additional Comments
About Areas of Concern for NMTP
Participants correctly
noted that the Board of Directors does an excellent job of fulfilling
its mission despite its small size. However, not all the Board members
are able to attend meetings regularly, which reduces the working size
of the Board and concentrates its work load still further. Burnout is
a serious risk in such circumstances.
The body now constituted
as the Board of Directors of NMTP was originally convened as an advisory
group for CMTP. The work the Board is currently doing is of great importance
and must be supported. However, CMTP has lost its advisory group, which
is essential for a program so often under siege to count on having.
Network members’
confusion about the relationship between NMTP and its close but distinct
relative, CMTP is an ongoing source of uncertainty as to how network
members (including CMTP faculty and interns, and even NMTP Board members)
can best and most appropriately interact with the two bodies. This confusion
affected the evaluation process itself.
Facilitator’s Recommendations for NMTP Expand the Board
of Directors, not only to replace Board members who have resigned, but
to increase the Board’s numbers from its current seven to at least ten.
Ask those current members who are currently unable to attend regularly
or take on significant tasks to resign, and make room for members who
can be more active.
Invite non-Board
members of NMTP to become chairs of Board committees, attend board meetings
(without having a vote), and work closely with the appropriate Board
members (e.g., chair of the Newsletter committee would work under and
with the Board Clerk, and a Continuing Education chair would work under
and with the Board member in charge of Consultation and Education).
This change, which is common to many board structures, would distribute
Board functions more widely, reduce burnout risk, and actively involve
more members in the functioning of the network.
The NMTP Board of
Directors should consider collaborating with the director of CMTP and
perhaps an outside organizational consultant to recruit NMTP members
to serve as an advisory group to CMTP (there has been no such group
available to CMTP since the original advisory group was constituted
as the NMTP Board). The director of CMTP should have the final say in
who would constitute such a group, but the input of both well-informed
NMTP members and a consultant who is not a participant in either CMTP
or NMTP would provide useful additional perspectives.
The board should
use the Network Notes and all other appropriate venues and occasions
to clarify the relationship between NMTP and CMTP,
for members of NMTP and people who associate with CMTP. The flow
chart (attached) that Dr. Joseph presented at the network assembly,
accompanied by a brief article about the history of both MTP/CMTP and
NMTP, could be published in the newsletter for this purpose.
For reasons described
in the next section, future evaluations should be informed by the following
recommendations:
Evaluations should
be done by outside consultants without prior significant relationships
with either NMTP nor CMTP. Before a large
group is assembled for the purposes of evaluation, the facilitator/evaluator
should interview all board members,
CMTP faculty and interns both individually and as a group, and
with a variety of highly involved and more peripheral network members. A full-scale network
assembly model should only be used for evaluative purposes if the previous
recommendation is addressed and if at least three full hours are allowed
for the assembly. There should be
a clear, written understanding between the NMTP Board and the evaluator(s)
as to the nature, goals, and written product expected of the evaluation
process.
Facilitator
Observations on the Evaluation Process Several important factors interfered with a full and
comprehensive evaluation of NMTP; therefore this evaluation report should
be viewed as preliminary in nature. These factors include: The assembled group
was too small to be representative of the NMTP network and therefore
to be informative enough. The assembled group
had too narrow a range of relationships to NMTP to be representative
of the network or to avoid undue polarization. That is, there were almost
no peripheral members of the network to bring in new perspectives. The facilitator
was unexpectedly without a network team of colleagues. Because the network
intervention model being used for the evaluation requires the facilitator
to operate in a shaman-like manner, conducting the energies of the group
and being inducted into rather than analyzing the process, a team is
essential to provide a complementary, more analytical balance, attending
to process concerns that the conductor is likely to overlook. This complementary
function was unexpectedly missing. As a result, the facilitator was
indeed inducted into the group process without the counterbalancing
and the observations and interventions of collaborators. Communication between
the Board and the facilitator concerning the Board’s charge to the facilitator
(and her team) to evaluate NMTP and concerning the relationship between
the evaluation segment of the meeting and the formal Board meeting were
overly vague and confusing. Prior to the assembly,
all Board communication with the facilitator was with the clerk of the
Board (David Trimble) and with the CMTP director, who sits ex officio on the Board, and none was with the Board President. In
retrospect, it was a serious and costly oversight of the facilitator
not to be in direct communication with the President, so as to be sure
of a shared understanding of the role of the facilitator. The facilitator
was incorrectly instructed to make room in the evaluation for a progress
report by the Board’s Consultation and Education Committee. Including
this report significantly disrupted the flow of the evaluation assembly,
stole needed time from the assembly
and the annual Board meeting that followed, and was both confusing and
aggravating to participants. (This error also meant that the Board was
forced to reschedule its annual meeting so as to allow enough time for
important business.) The facilitator
was not informed of tensions within the CMTP program, tensions which
spilled over into the NMTP evaluation process. In part because those
tensions were not directly expressed, and because there was no team
to serve as extra eyes and ears, the facilitator did not recognize their
manifestations until well after the assembly had ended. This combination
of circumstances seems to have intensified, rather than resolving pre-existing
polarizations. The facilitator
was not an outsider to the Network, but rather a long-time player in
CMTP (as coordinator of the family therapy faculty and supervisor to
the intern group); as such, she unknowingly played a polarizing role
in the above-mentioned intra-CMTP tensions before and during the evaluation
process. The original two
hours, itself two short, was abbreviated to about an hour because of
delays in starting and because of the incorrect instruction to include
the Board’s Consultation and Evaluation Committee Report within the
evaluation segment of the Board meeting.
What follows is an elaboration on and explanation of
some of the points made in above bullet list. The NMTP evaluation was
intended to take the form of a full-scale network assembly, as developed
by Carolyn Attneave, Ph.D. (who
helped found the Minority Training Program) and Ross Speck, M.D. The
full-scale network involves gatherings of people whose relationships
with an index individual, family, or organization range from intimate,
to instrumental, to interested but peripheral. (For example, in the
years when MTP/CMTP held network assemblies for program evaluation,
central players, including core faculty, interns, and adjunct faculty
attended, but so did more marginal but highly interested members of
the network, such as: field site supervisors, former supervisors, graduates
of the program, and friends from the hospital and from the larger multicultural
mental health community.) Prior to the full-scale assembly, the facilitator,
or conductor, met alone with the core faculty and interns for several
hours. Doing so helped resolve and contain some of the tensions that
inevitably emerge between trainers and trainees in a program as intense
and as strapped for resources as CMTP, and prevented inappropriate spillover
of those tensions into the larger group. There are significant risks
of both undue polarization and inadequate information flow when the
smaller-scale work doesn’t precede the larger assembly and when network
assemblies do not include at least several marginal members. The peripheral
status and perspective of these participants buffers them from being
caught up in the issues of the day at the same time that it offers more
central players new perspectives and energies. Because this year, the evaluation assembly was for
NMTP and not for CMTP, the facilitator was not asked, and did not think
to ask, to convene the core faculty and interns together before the
NMTP assembly. And, unfortunately, almost no peripheral network members
attended the evaluation meeting, perhaps in part because of the severe
weather of the weekend, and in part because many network members, having
spent the previous weekend day at the NMTP-co-sponsored conference,
did not realize how useful it would have been to NMTP for them to attend
the second day. NMTP’s first network evaluation, therefore, suffered
from a paucity of more peripherally engaged network members. It also
suffered from the absence of a full network evaluation team; it has
been documented that the conductors of network assemblies literally
conduct (in the sense of a lightning rod) the energies and emotions
of the participants and need to rely on their network team colleagues
for more fully rational, left-brain collaboration. Several of the family
therapy faculty who were not also on the Board were to serve as her
network team but unfortunately, at the last minute, none could attend.
With all the brilliance of hindsight, my retrospective
examination of the meeting and follow-up conversations with several
players at the meeting suggest that the assembly did succumb to undue
polarization (as opposed to polarization which is both temporary and
ultimately productive). It is possible that we could have transformed
the energy all the polarization generated into productive problem-solving
(the usual sequence in full-scale network assemblies), but we had neither
a full team nor enough time to accomplish that transformation. In retrospect,
it might have been wiser, if logistically challenging, to postpone the
evaluation or quickly revise the planned format at the meeting itself,
once all these factors were apparent. The findings and recommendations
(both those of the participants and of the facilitator) reported above
are therefore best understood as incomplete in light of this situation.
Given the limited time and attendance and the problematic
structure of the evaluation meeting, the participants’ descriptions
of NMTP strengths and concerns, and their suggestions reported above
cannot be considered to be fully representative of the perceptions of
the Network as a whole. My own observations have their own limitations
as well. This material is presented nevertheless is, I believe, a useful
starting point for a more thorough information-gathering process in
the future.
I invite members of
the NMTP network to use the pages of The
NMTP Notes to add to, question, or critique this very preliminary
report. |
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Consultation and Education Committee Meeting
Notes
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