Leadership

Accreditation

Florida State University: While at FSU, our programs have completed self-studies for NASP, CACREP, the American Psychological Association (APA) as well as the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). APA granted accreditation for ten years following their site visit; NASP has approved a site visit for our program based on our written portfolio. The CACREP programs’ self-study documents have been submitted and are pending.
Troy University: While at Troy, we were undergoing accreditation by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) for our Counselor Education program.
Troy University: While at Troy, I was also able to successfully shepherd the School Psychology / School Psychometry programs through State of Alabama, Board of Education accreditation.

Shortage

School Psychology Shortage Article: I was approached by a practicing school psychologist in Florida (Vickers) about the shortages she had been studying. A Troy colleague of mine and I had collected similar data in Alabama. As a result, we published an article that found that in an effort to maintain current levels of coverage, Alabama was estimated to have 32.4% of current school psychology positions unfilled; Florida had an estimate of 22.5%. If the states choose to improve the student to practitioner ratios to NASP recommendations, Alabama would have 94.6% to 96% of the recommended positions unfilled; Florida would have 89.8% to 93.7% unfilled.
School Psychology Shortage Task Force: As a result of this work, I began serving on the State of Florida and the national, Trainers of School Psychology task forces pertaining to shortages. This work lead to increases in resources for school psychology training across the college and the state.

At Florida State University, I took on the leadership task as recruitment coordinator for our programs. My first goal as was documented in our new recruitment plan was to matriculate more diverse students.As a result, FSU’s student body in the psychological and counseling programs in the College of Education is considerably more diverse.
Specifically, there was a significant difference in the number of diverse students in the Educational Specialists program when comparing matriculation for the three years before and the three years after I began participating in the recruitment process (from 10% to 45.4% diversity in the Ed.S. Program; χ2 = 10.11, = .002). There was a nonsignificant (but still profound) increase in the number of diverse students for the doctoral program as well (from 39.1% to 53.13% diversity in Ph.D. Program; χ2 = 1.038, = .308).