It was great to see so many Society members at APA in Chicago and from my view, it seems a good time was had by all. I kicked off my conference on Friday by chairing the presidential symposium Out of the Office and into the Streets: Interventions for Diverse Clients and Settings. The presenters, Daniel Gaztambide, Jeffrey Zimmerman, Kimberly Langrehr, Laverne Berkel, and Gary Howard described their efforts to take psychotherapy beyond the consulting room, and august discussant Mike Constantino provided wise words across all of the presentations. I am very thankful to all of these wonderful professionals for their stellar presentations. I was pleased to see a good crowd and that we had time for some lively discussion at the end.

Immediately after the symposium, I also had the great honor of attending our Society poster session, which was chock full of excellent psychotherapy research. A team effort with student representative Carly Schwartzman and program chair James Boswell resulted in the selection of two student poster awardees out of six very fine finalists. The winners were:  Yixiao Dong, whose poster was titled Therapist Effects in Routine Outcome Monitoring: A Doubly Latent Invariance Test of the BHM-20 and Kelsey Redmayne for her poster titled Client Feedback Outcome Measures: Evaluating Outcome Trajectories and Clinical Significance. Thanks to Lavita Nadkarni, Carly, and James for serving on the selection committee.

In addition, at our poster session, the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration Jeremy Safran Memorial Outstanding Poster Award was bestowed on Yunling Chang, for the poster Congruence/Genuineness: A Meta-Analysis. SEPI’s president, Catherine Eubanks, was there to make the presentation, attended by SfAP Past President Michael Constantino, who was instrumental in creating the award. You might recall that I presented the SfAP counterpart to this award to Brin Grenyer and colleagues at SEPI’s conference in June. 

Friday was a very busy day, ending with the SfAP awards ceremony and social hour, which gives us the opportunity to salute the contributions of our outstanding members. Elsewhere in this issue, you will see the full list of award and grant winners—they are many and mighty, so I will not repeat them here. Also, at this ceremony, we honored the service of our continuing board members, as well as Past President, Michael Constantino, and three other board members completing their terms: Leigh Ann Carter, Rosemary Phelps, Susan Woodhouse. We will not let them get very far away though!

Just this past weekend, the Board of Directors met in Kansas City, Missouri, the home of my university, the University of Missouri-Kansas City. We had a solid agenda that will caused us to focus and work, but I we also had some fun around the edges. Look for a summary of the board’s activities in the next bulletin, but as always, feel free to contact me directly if you have questions or input on society matters.

0

0

Be the 1st to vote.

Nancy L. Murdock, Ph.D.

Nancy L. Murdock, Ph.D. is Professor of Counseling Psychology at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She teaches graduate level courses in family systems theory, advanced counseling theory, research design and analysis and supervises couples and family practicum. Dr. Murdock is active in numerous professional organizations, having served as the Vice President for Education and Training of the Society of Counseling Psychology and as president of the Council of Counseling Psychology Training Programs. Dr. Murdock's research interests include family systems theory, professional issues, and counseling process. She is the author of Theories of Counseling and Psychotherapy: A Case Approach (4 nd Ed., 2017). A licensed psychologist in Missouri, Dr. Murdock practiced as a staff psychologist for Catholic Charities of Kansas City for 10 years and currently maintains a limited independent practice which includes serving as the psychological consultant for the Kansas City Ballet. She is currently president-elect of the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, Division 29 of the American Psychological Association.