Fall, 2009
Dear Alliant Community,
We, the gender emphasis group are writing to convey our growing frustration with the manner in which our professional school of clinical psychology is not implementing the Gender / LGBT Emphasis Area. As discerning consumers of our doctoral education, we feel compelled to express our discontent about the paucity of Gender/LGBT coursework and support. We write with the hope that our concerns may be addressed in a timely manner, as the circumstances we describe here are several years old.
We all share a common professional goal that can be summed up as the following: to effectively care for and treat clients who suffer from concerns relating to gender, sexual orientation, and sexual identity. We also share a deep and worrisome common concern: At graduation will our gender emphasis training have sufficiently prepared us to meet our professional goal? Will the gender emphasis area have only existed in name (as appears to be the case now)?
We are writing to share this concern with our fellow students, as well as administrators and faculty at the CSPP San Francisco campus. We are writing on behalf not only of ourselves, but also for future students, and, arguably most importantly, for the sake of our future clients. Those clients need and deserve competent, informed, and caring treatment from a passionate and professional group of CSPP graduates who will be equipped with training that far surpasses that given in virtually any other Bay area program, and, indeed, in the nation as well.
With our collective interests and previous educational experiences in the areas of gender and sexual identity, we were drawn to this program with the promise of continuing and significantly expanding our clinical and research interests.
When we applied to CSPP’s San Francisco program, it was the only school in the Bay Area which advertised the following on its website:
“The Clinical Psychology PhD and PsyD programs at CSPP in San Francisco offer extensive training in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) psychology…The university resources described above—combined with the tremendous LGBT clinical, training and research opportunities in the San Francisco Bay Area—enable our students to obtain significantly more mentoring in LGBT psychology than students can receive in most other U.S. psychology departments.”
Interestingly, this description of the program on the school website has changed in recent months and now reflects a more modest description of the gender emphasis program. Not surprisingly, over the past year, our excitement upon entering the program turned from anticipation to frustration as we realized that what we had been led to expect was, in fact, not present in either requirements, electives, or in an organized emphasis area itself. We feel as if the advertised promises about the AIU, and CSPP’s, commitments to working with and better understanding this population were simply and sadly not what we have found here.
Last year, despite inquiries as the year went on, there was no mention or acknowledgment of the problems the emphasis area faced. As students we were confused about the discrepancy between what had been advertised and what was being experienced. The rhetoric of commitment and the reality of an almost non-existent emphasis area grew starker this year, when, sadly, these circumstances continued.
There are several critical issues that we see as fundamentally problematic. In our estimation, if these issues are not thoughtfully addressed, then the CSPP Gender Emphasis Area will exist only in name. The following inadequacies have greatly impaired the high level of clinical and research education that we expected. The lack of administrative support, inspiration, or oversight, combined with the extremely sparse curricular and practicum choices, and the relatively small number of faculty with Gender and LGBT expertise are fundamentally inconsistent with what was advertised by CSPP both in print and on their AIU-CSPP website.
It was brought to our attention that at one time faculty administrative support was provided to each emphasis area; there were emphasis area directors who had research and practice strengths in emphasis areas. These emphasis directors were compensated financially for the additional work they contributed to their respective area. These positions, and the compensation that went with them, simply disappeared in a series of fiscal cuts that have taken place in the past couple of years. We believe the emphasis areas have suffered dramatically as a result of this lack of faculty oversight.
Over the last semester, student representatives cited filling this position as an important, visible and urgently needed step to reviving the Gender/ LGBT Emphasis area during several meetings with members of the administration and faculty. We sought immediate oversight, definition, and clarity in the hope of reviving our emphasis area. The remaining months of the 2009-spring semester have come and gone, as have the summer months. We are now well into the 2009 fall semester, but the emphasis area continues to have no cornerstone: we have heard nothing of this repeated request. Current faculty members who have contributed administrative guidance in the past are still deeply committed to making this emphasis area a reality. However, we cannot expect these individuals already overwhelmed with assisting students in an ad hoc and unpaid manner to lead the emphasis’ administrative dimension without any resources of any kind for themselves, for speakers, course additions and supplementations, etc.
In terms of practicum options, we also seek support in identifying additional clinical sites, which pertain to our emphasis area. It has been difficult to gain relevant clinical experience with only the handful of options that are currently available. The Bay Area is rich in these resources compared to so many other areas of the country. The very real fiscal crisis of the state, and the greater Bay area, has put a horrid strain on many public mental health programs and practicum facilities. The need for services has arguably never been greater, but we find that there is not significant outreach by our University to work with sites to allow us to develop our clinical skills in a variety of clinical settings.
As we mentioned above, in meetings with administrators in the 2009 spring semester, the subject of curricular choices arose. Faculty and administrators in attendance made it clear to us, the students, that offering classes where issues of gender, sexuality, and gender identity had been applied to clinical psychology had historically been problematic. Being hamstrung by APA guidelines, a lack of competent faculty in these research areas, as well as a lack of student enrollment when classes were indeed offered, topped the list of reasons why so few LGBT / Gender Emphasis area classes had been offered. How then can a gender emphasis program continue to be advertised with such curricular deficits?
From our perspective, it seems that all of these issues could and should be addressed by the administration. If faculty carefully crafted course syllabi, APA guidelines could be met, and at the same time, issues of gender and sexuality could be incorporated and would meet or exceed long-standing curricular benchmarks which are no longer being met. Living in the Bay Area should offer our institution numerous choices of adjunct and part-time faculty with professional expertise in the fields of gender and sexuality.
In the past, when professionals have been found to teach courses in the Gender/ LGBT Emphasis area, courses have too-often been cancelled due to “low enrollment.” This summer, to cite but one example, Psy 8553: Advanced Clinical Skills: Psychotherapy Constructivist Approaches to Gender was cancelled due to low enrollment. Yet, in the spring semester 2009, an African-American Psychology course was taught even though only five students were enrolled. Reports from members of that class indicate it was a great success. Financial ramifications aside, low class size is valuable in innumerable ways and should be replicated, especially given the specific interest area of gender and sexuality. Decisions involving the cancellation of courses should take into account all relevant factors, and members of our group stand willing to assist in the planning of such efforts, with the aid of an emphasis area coordinator and other interested faculty.
Our concerns about the lack of qualified faculty contributing to the Gender/LGBT Emphasis Area came to a head late spring 2009 when last year’s G1 PsyD students had to make their choices as to who would chair their dissertation committee and conduct their Psy7003 Proposal Design Course. For many of us, the choice of faculty whose research reflected a stable and long-standing commitment to issues of gender and sexuality were few and far between. Students who specifically wanted to focus their research on gender and sexuality were forced to choose from the available faculty, many of whom were only matched out of necessity. Given the importance of our choice of dissertation research topic in attaining our doctorate in clinical psychology and CSPP’s desire to produce critically conscious “local clinical scientists,” such dilemmas should never happen. We realize that efforts to bring in new faculty with expertise in issues of gender and sexuality have recently been partially successful. Needless to say, this does not reduce the fundamentally unsatisfactory situation that many fellow emphasis area classmates are now in. This is another issue about which we have expressed concern, but to our knowledge, is not being addressed in an effective manner.
Lastly, we believe it is crucial to develop professional recognition for gender emphasis work. This could and should be noted on our transcript, and might also include a certificate, which explains that we have met the requirements of a rigorous curriculum in this specific area of study. All of this would indicate a certain number of credits and/or benchmarks that have been passed and thus ensure us, as well as practicum and post-doctoral training sites, that we have attained a substantive level of training and competence. Were such a proposal implemented in a timely manner, it would surely also support the rebirth and the integrity of the emphasis area. Were this done, the result would go some distance to bring the present rhetoric of the University and the reality of its offerings more congruent. As a result, this would truly establish our program as one which could recruit, admit, and graduate students interested in pursuing this emphasis.
It was brought to our attention that in October CSPP San Francisco faculty and administration will be examining the status of emphasis areas as they are currently constructed. We trust that you will bring the concerns cited in this letter to this meeting in the hope that by Fall 2009, LGBT / Gender Emphasis Area students will have real assurances that the emphasis area that was integral in our decision to come to CSPP is viable, for such is surely and sadly not the case at present.
Please know that the energy, frustration and passion, which we have shown in this letter, will not end with this letter. We look forward to working both independently and in cooperation with CSPP administration and faculty to make the LGBT / Gender Emphasis Area one that will not only prosper during our time at CSPP but will endure for future clinical psychology students. The integrity and reputation of our program is at stake, as is the status of the training that led us to choose this school. We can and must do better.
We thank you for your rapid consideration in these matters. We stand ready to assist and collaborate with you.
Sincerely,
Members of the Gender Emphasis Group