President's Message: "I am AASP, You are AASP, We are AASP"
Amy Baltzell, EdD, CMPC, Boston University
I am grateful and honored to serve as AASP’s 32nd President. I have been deeply moved by the passion and commitment to the field of so many members, from the E-Board, the Past-Presidents, the Fellows, the Interim Certification Council and now Certification Council, the Committee Chairs, our AASP administrative support team, AASP student and professional members to the Special Interest Groups. It is truly amazing how much effort is put into making AASP an important, relevant, go-to organization. Our conference in Orlando was a great success; we had our second largest ever attendance, and the programming was fantastic. Beyond the keynotes, the programming is a 100% reflection of the abstracts submitted by the membership. Keep up the good work! The willingness of so many to work countless volunteer hours to make our organization better and to create a bright future for those involved in applied sport psychology is inspiring.
We, as AASP, have been in a major growth period in terms of membership, participation in the annual conference, and the many requisite steps that it has taken to create our new certification program. Before addressing what is to come, I would like to take a moment to celebrate and acknowledge what has already been envisioned and manifested over the past few years. We, as an organization, have made great strides. We have:
- Examined our certification process and completed a Job Task Analysis (of applied sport psychology practice)
- Moved to an external certification board to professionalize our field from the public’s perspective. Meaning, in place of having an AASP internal certification, we will now seek accreditation through a national accrediting agency that functions independently of AASP. This effort was in the service of creating an accreditation that will be seen as legitimate, national certification for the practice of applied sport psychology.
- Created a new mark for our certified practitioner: Certified Mental Performance Consultant (CMPC)
- Developed webinars and virtual conferences
- Created and implemented a more stringent response to ethical violations of CMPCs and members
- Expanded our Special Interest Groups (running strong with 27).
This year, we will focus on establishing resources to help prepare both students and established professionals to understand and complete our new certification, and encourage as many competent practitioners as possible to pursue, attain and sustain their CMPC certification. I also will support the efforts already in motion to help both educate the public on the services that can be provided by CMPCs and connect practitioners to job opportunities.
Improve the quality of sport psychology training (geared toward CMPC development)
As someone who has run a graduate Sport Psychology program for almost a decade and been involved in graduate training for 20 years, I am excited about the prospect of having AASP establish standards that create clear expectations for graduate programs in our effort to educate and prepare competent CMPCs. Certainly, the new Certification Program Candidate Handbook already offers excellent guidance about what needs to be in place to become a CMPC practitioner.
In an effort to further improve the quality of sport psychology training, focused on CMPC preparation, I will support the shared efforts to:
- Create a framework of competency-based standards for graduate training leading to AASP Certification
- Develop Graduate Program Recognition. Once the guidelines are established, we will work to identify how programs align with the competency-based standards for graduate training leading to CMPC Certification and recognize those programs that meet the criteria.
CMPC enhanced credibility from externally certified status
In our efforts to strengthen the certification program, we have created an opportunity to enhance the credibility and value of the credential to the individual consultant, consumer and employer. This credibility stems from the fact that we will apply to have our new certification formally recognized by the National Commission of Certifying Agencies (NCCA), which approves accredited certification programs. The NCCA also approves certification for professions such as the NATA (National Athletic Training Association), NSCA (National Strength and Conditioning Association), ACSM (American College of Sports Medicine) and others.
Develop requisite resources to become a CMPC
Becoming a CMPC requires applicants to meet course work criteria, engage in supervised practice as well as take and pass the CMPC exam. As such, we are hard at work developing resources to help practitioners become certified or to re-certify. These resources in development include:
- Study materials for the CMPC exam
- Webinars (starting in 2018) that provide topics and CEU options for those re-certifying
- List of mentors who can offer in-person and virtual supervision
Connecting AASP practitioners to job opportunities
I will support the initiative of Past-President Angus Mugford to connect practitioners to job opportunities. To help make all of this effort to raise our standards and to improve education and training of certified consultants, we need to get the word out to consumers and the general public to increase the visibility of AASP as an organization and the services provided by CMPCs. To this end, we will continue working on:
- Further developing an interactive job description decision-making tree
- Expand our online Career Center with information and regular posts for career opportunities.
- Create a coordinated marketing campaign. The focus of the campaign will be to elevate the value of CMPC targeted to key stakeholders. Part of the strategy will be to focus on athletes and coaches who are publicly known to utilize sport psychology services.
Develop overarching initiatives to recruit and retain AASP members
We also need to continue to grow AASP membership. This expansion will be partially contingent upon increasing international membership. AASP should also be a home for young and veteran researchers as well as practitioners in applied sport psychology. To be able to inspire, challenge, and improve ourselves and our organization, we all need to be engaged in a way that works for each of us. We need to be able to help one another hold high standards, adjust and adapt to the needs of our consumers, and nudge one another to keep in mind the resources and strategies that will most help our clients thrive, optimize performance and maintain a sense of well-being.
Thanks to Natalie Durand-Bush, our Publications and Information Division Head, we all had access to some fun facts about AASP at our 2017 conference. I would like to highlight a few that demonstrate the engagement and quality of our organization:
- 1 only sport psychology association offering an exam-based certification program (AASP!)
- 3 AASP journals
- 4 webinars offered in 2017
- 6 editions of the AASP newsletter per year
- 11 editions of Directory of Applied Sport Psychology Graduate Programs (soon to be 12)
- 31 AASP committees
- 32 annual conferences since AASP founded in 1986
- 81 active AASP Fellows
- 203 abstract reviewers for 2017 AASP conference
- 418 sessions/posters accepted for 2017 conference
- 525 Certified Mental Performance Consultants
- Almost 2,500 current AASP members
I encourage each of you to seriously consider what you hope for our field, and what is necessary to help us thrive. I had the opportunity to talk with the Past-Presidents’ Council – those who founded AASP and our field. I think of that group as having the super-power of knowledge and wisdom. One area of hope that they conveyed was the importance for all of us to keep in mind the balance between research and practice. Adopting the scientist-practitioner model means, in most instances, that researchers and practitioners need to help inspire and inform one another’s work. We need to lean toward research and theory to inform our practice. And their call is to keep quality research and theory alive in our conference.
How about you? Whether you are an applied sport psychology researcher, CMPC, clinician, academic program leader, graduate student, or someone from another field interested in ours, I encourage you to think about what you can bring to the profession in terms of theory, research and/or practice. Though the focus of several of our recent discussions has been the certification program, which has been worthy and necessary, we must consider other interdependent topics such as diversity and inclusion, youth sport, media in sport, eating disorders in sport, to just name a few. If we look to our Special Interest Groups (SIGs), we can see the issues requiring our attention to help our field, over time, thrive and remain relevant. The SIGS demonstrate to me what you all, we all, deem as important beyond our shared center of applied sport psychology research and practice. Throughout this year and into the future, if we can keep in mind for each of us “I am AASP, You are AASP, We are AASP”, we will have a much more dynamic, informed and valued range of expertise to offer to the public.
Thank for your continued support of AASP! We continue to look for members to serve on committees and on the Executive Board. If you are inspired to do so, we welcome you to volunteer and share your passion and time to contribute to AASP. If you are not sure what you would want to do – feel free to contact Lani Lawrence, as our Membership Services Division Head, who will be happy to share with you the many opportunities to serve. Finally, thank you for your support of this precious opportunity to lead you all – I promise to do my best.
