APA and psychology generally must continue to respond to the psychological needs of the diverse population of the US and its changing demographics. We must continue to work on making psychology culturally and ethnically inclusive.  As an educator, I see the continuing needs to increase the recruitment and retention of minority students and faculty, and to make our curricula culturally, linguistically, and ethnically sensitive for all students.  These problems are intertwined. Progress on any one front facilitates progress on the other front, but similarly lack of progress inhibits the overall effort. I have no magic solution to these problems, but I think that one area that could be very helpful is to involve our education and training in settings that reflect the problems and the services offered to a broad spectrum of clients.  We need to get training programs involved in primary care settings, in multidisciplinary clinics, and in the new behavioral health care systems.  Students need to be exposed to the issues involved in delivery of a variety of psychological services to diverse populations, including program development, administration and evaluation.

One of my special interests as a candidate for President is in education. I would like to see APA take a lead role in developing model curricula for graduate education and for continuing education.  There are a number of areas where I think our curricula and our training are behind the times.  These include such topics as empirically supported interventions, computer applications in psychology, tele-psychology, needs of developmental groups (children, adolescents, the elderly), and the new systems of integrated behavioral health care delivery. Certainly among these topics should be a number of curricular models for increasing our ability to respond to the needs of a diverse populace - topics in the traditional areas of assessment, personality, psychopathology, intervention as well as these newer areas.  These curricula could be developed using many of the existing reports of the Public Interest Directorate and other segments of APA.
 
I believe I have a track record of mentoring a diverse group of students to go on to independent research, academic and practice careers.  I have made an effort in my various professional roles in national, state and local professional organizations to bring new people into these associations, especially women and minorities. I  would hope to continue to do so as APA President.

Department of Psychology at University of Houston
Comments to: lprehm@uh.edu