Promotion of Academic Careers in School Psychology: A Conceptual Framework of Impact Points, Recommended Strategies, and Hopeful Outcomes.

Abstract

School psychology is facing a major shortage of faculty in graduate training and education programs. To deal with this shortage and the issues that surround it, we propose a conceptual framework that incorporates a number of impact points that graduate training programs can use to educate and sustain individuals in academic careers. The impact points include: selection of students, program-related training variables, post-program transition variables, and sustainability of academic careers. Each of these impact points is discussed within the context of the role that current faculty and practitioners in the profession can play in graduate education and training of academic scholars. Among the variety of potential solutions to the shortage, we introduce the concept of the virtual university to promote future education and sustainability of faculty within our graduate training programs. A case scenario from graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is presented as a context for the impact points raised in the article. We argue that those of us in the profession think systemically and lead the way into a new era of collaborative work across our graduate programs and among our colleagues in clinical, counseling, and related areas of applied and professional psychology graduate training. Like other professional specialties in psychology, the field of school psychology is facing challenges in terms of recruitment of faculty for our graduate education/training programs (hereafter called training programs with recognition of distinctions made between education and training [see, for example, Phillips, The positions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the position of faculty in the School Psychology Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison or the