NCSPP 2025 Mid-Winter Conference

Professional psychology is rooted in utilizing insight and compassion to alleviate human suffering. Tibetan Buddhist imagery is full of provocative symbolism, most notably deities simultaneously holding a lotus flower and a flaming sword. The lotus connotes compassion arising from the depths of hardship, while the sword represents insight into the etiology of human suffering. The ability to hold both at once, insightful compassion and compassionate insight, is a difficult task requiring many of our core competencies of relationship, self-awareness, advocacy, professionalism, and scientific-mindedness.

NCSPP was founded in 1976 and the original NCSPP training model of 1997 was a trailblazer in the field of doctoral psychology education. It not only solidified the Psy.D. degree as serving a unique and essential societal need but also provided competency-based domains and developmental processes that inspire APA accreditation today. The model has been revised to meet emerging needs, with the last iteration being in 2010. Yet, the world has dramatically changed in the past decade, as the veil of dysconsciousness regarding colonial caste and oppressive pandemics have ravaged our sense of identity and relationships. The pace of technological innovation has left the field with questions of how to incorporate it in an ethical manner that stays rooted in psychological principles. Ideals of social justice have been co-opted and confused with privileged comfort and the relationships between and among our students and colleagues are microcosms of societal divides. This calls for a revision of our beloved training model, not just an update, as some of the core assumptions of the model dating back almost 50 years no longer stand amid change.

Over the past decade, the discourse of our training council has frequently included the need for our model to address societal issues of today and tomorrow while incorporating scientific-mindedness and research. Our graduates have the potential to fill much-needed societal gaps to address the etiology of psychological suffering, ranging from civil division and social isolation to decolonization and liberation. We continue to serve as visionaries regarding social responsiveness and justice within professional psychology.

We welcome submissions for the 2025 Mid-Winter Conference that challenge our current understanding and envision the future of professional psychology. Submissions regarding our training model, current and new competencies, issues of social responsiveness, fast-developing technology, and the evolving landscape of clinical work of assessment and intervention are all welcomed. We encourage your scholarship, creativity, imagination, and calls to action. The 2025 NCSPP Mid-Winter Conference calls on us to cultivate compassion and insight to re-imagine our training model. NCSPP, as a leader in professional psychology training, has the onus to operationalize the competencies of the future, increasing the sophistication and relevance to define our scope of practice, holding seemingly opposite forces simultaneously, and again be visionary.