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STATUS REPORT
MARCH 1999

After an unusually long hiatus, the Status Report is back. There are lots of reasons, both good and bad, to explain the missing issues of the Report, but I will spare you all of those. Instead, I’d like to focus on some of the things that are currently underway within the Council.

New Name - New Brochure

Enclosed is a copy of the Council’s new brochure reflecting our new name. Pollie Murphy and the Publications Committee (Richard McGuire, Colleen O’Rourke and Wayne Swisher) have worked double-duty this year to ensure that all of our materials from the brochure, to the directory, to our mission statement and our letterhead have been revised and are up-to-date.

April Conference

By now, most of you should have received your conference materials and you can see for yourself that this promises to be a great meeting. Rodger Dalston (Program Chair), Gip Seaver, (Co-Chair) Elaine McNiece, and Mary Ambroe, have organized an information-filled program into an exciting format. Building on the Council’s tradition of open dialogue, the conference kicks off with A Great Debate where four of our members will debate the future of undergraduate education in the discipline. That is followed by a session that showcases several unique educational models, and third session that does the same for clinical instruction models. There is clearly something for everyone in this line-up of topics. In response to previous conference feedback, the committee has also revised the system of assigning members to break-out sessions to reflect institutional type and personal preference.

We are also looking forward to the report from the Long Range Planning Task Force. That group (Jerry Carney, Douglas Martin, John Petit, Daniel Tullos, Kathy Whipple, and Chair, Ro Scudder) will be offering their perspective on the future of the Council as we move to include undergraduate only programs and continue to expand our communication and advocacy activities. Their report will be Saturday morning during the Plenary Session, with the traditional banquet and entertainment scheduled for that evening.

I have had the privilege of working closely with the conference committee for the past few years, and none has been as creative or hard-working as this group. We owe them all a debt of gratitude.

ALERT: For you "old-timers" at the conference, you know that a continuing challenge is formulating, revising, and vetting resolutions in three short days. As a means of ensuring that important or complex issues get their full consideration by both the Membership and Executive Board, the EB invites all interested parties to forward any resolutions that you may have for consideration by the membership prior to the meeting. We plan to have copies of early-submitted resolutions available at registration, so attendees can begin discussing them right away. We will, of course, continue to solicit, discuss, and vote on forwarding resolutions to the membership throughout the meeting; but for those of you with an issue at hand, this is an opportunity to have your idea distributed to every attendee upon their arrival at the meeting. Prior to the conference, resolutions can be sent to me at my address in the Directory or to kim@kbor.state.ks.us

ADDITIONAL ALERT: The program committee has made a special request this year that clinic directors and clinic coordinators accompany program representatives to the conference. The program will be more beneficial to all attendees if we have a sizable contingent of clinic directors in attendance. Please do whatever you can to encourage and support your local clinic director’s attendance.

Future Meetings

One of the duties of the President-Elect is to investigate future meeting sites. Elaine McNiece, our current President-Elect, has taken that charge seriously and has identified meeting times and facilities for the next several years. So mark your calendars!

2000 - April 6-8, Catamaran Hotel, San Diego, CA

2001- March 26-29, Charleston, SC (Pending)

2002 - April 24-27, Riviera Hotel, Palm Springs, CA

2003 - The 25th Anniversary of the Council - St. Louis, MO

Salary Survey

We will have to change our vernacular in the coming years, for future references to "the survey" will have two possible interpretations. In direct response to program requests, the Information Exchange Committee (Jane Lieberman, Malcolm McNeil, Roy Shinn, and Chair, Linda Petrosino) is currently piloting a comprehensive survey of academic salaries in communication sciences and disorders. In order to ensure continuity of our existing survey data base, this fall you will receive the regular biennial survey solicitation. In 2000, you will receive a new solicitation requesting comprehensive salary information, with the two survey instruments alternating with each other in future years. Development and testing of a new survey represents an enormous effort on the part of the committee, an effort that was in addition to the ongoing demands of collecting, organizing and interpreting our existing survey.

Professional Development and Advocacy

The Professional Development and Advocacy Committee (Mary Louise Edwards, Irv Hochberg, Kim Oller, and Chair, Jon Miller) have been extremely active in the past few months, but promises to be even busier in the months to come. The group has developed an ambitious work plan for 1999, that will be shared at the April meeting. The plan targets increased funding for research training for both undergraduate and graduate students. Working with Morgan Downey, our Washington consultant, the Committee has begun an advocacy program targeting several institutes at the NIH. The Committee’s letter to the NIDCD Strategic Planning Group summarizing parts of their plan is available on the Council’s website (click on "Reports").

Financial Aid Acceptance Deadlines

Spring semester means application and admissions deadlines. Upon written ballot from the member programs last year, the Council approved Resolution 98-4 which states:

RESOLVED, That the Council recommend that graduate programs allow applicants until April 15 to make final decisions regarding acceptance of offers of admission and financial aid for the following summer of fall semester. While this is now the stated policy of the Council, I would also direct your attention to the Council of Graduate Schools (COGS), Resolution Regarding Graduate Scholars, Fellows, Trainees, and Assistants. That resolution states that students are in fact, under no obligation to accept offers of financial assistance until April 15. While not all CAPCSD institutions are signatories to the COGS Resolution, the vast majority of us have agreed to abide by its guidelines. For a copy of the resolution and a list of supporting institutions, readers are directed to: http://www.cgsnet.org/publications/resolut.htm

Webmaster

For those of you frequenting the CAPCSD website, you have noticed many changes. All of these are due to the efforts of the Council Webmaster, Maurice Mendel. For those of you who have not visited the site in a while, I encourage you to take a look. You’ll find draft copies of the minutes from our November meeting, photos, and much more!

Archivist

The Council is now over 20 years old. As we age, it is important that we preserve our past. Fortunately, Barb Shadden has agreed to lead that preservation effort and assume the role of Council Archivist. Barb will be responsible for maintaining the Council’s text and graphic legacy and for organizing existing materials into a useful archival system. Watch for special exhibits from our archive collection at future meetings.

Singular Scholarship

The Council will be forever grateful to Singular Publishing and the Singh family for their generous contribution making the Singh Scholarship a reality. Chuck Speaks is coordinating the development of the application and review process for the first year of the Scholarship.

Changes in Audiology

As I reported at the Corporate Business Meeting in November, representatives from the Council, ASHA and AAA met last August to develop a program entitled "Transitioning to the New Audiology Standards." The group agreed to a format and list of speakers for a one and one-half day meeting to be held in conjunction with Council meeting this April in Jacksonville. This meeting was designed to offer a forum for discussion of the issues surrounding changes in audiology curricula, and to offer specific examples of innovative program formulation and administration. Following several weeks of work on the part of our Program Committee, AAA abruptly withdrew from the collaboration. After careful review, the Executive Board felt that it was both politically difficult and financially impossible to proceed with the plan without full participation from all of the original groups.

Upon the advice of the membership at the November meeting, the Executive Board invited four consultants known for their expertise in audiology education (Arlene Carney, John Ferraro, Maurice Mendel, and Rick Talbott) to participate in an all-day EB retreat on January 23, 1999. That meeting proved to be highly productive and yielded a plan for the Council for the coming months. A detailed summary of the meeting and its outcome will be discussed and offered to the membership for endorsement in April. I would, however, like to offer a brief summary here.

First, the Executive Board is preparing a position statement that is built upon Council resolutions and policies. For example, this position paper will reiterate our position that the doctorate is one possible entry-level degree for the practice of audiology and that the AuD is one possible doctoral designation for audiology degrees. Moreover the paper will attempt to place several years’ resolutions into a single context with supporting statements. This paper will be distributed and discussed in Jacksonville and will hopefully serve as the basis for a consensus statement from the Council.

Second, we will begin a more active advocacy program, built around the consensus statement and past resolutions. Too often in the past, we have not formally shared our positions with key constituencies; professional organizations, higher education associations, state licensure boards, state legislatures, etc. Clearly, such advocacy must be carefully considered and implemented, but we must begin to organize ourselves to be more effective advocates for our interests. Efforts to develop a broader-based perspective on advocacy will likely serve us well in dealing with numerous issues in the years ahead.

Third, a committee (Arlene Carney, John Ferraro, Larry Humes, and Chair, Chuck Speaks) has been appointed to develop a Model Curriculum for Preparation for Entry-Level Practice in Audiology. As odd as it may sound, we, as academicians, have never before promulgated a model curriculum. Thus, this would serve as our first attempt to delineate the curricular components that are important to audiology preparation. The committee charge leaves the group free to develop a curriculum that spans both undergraduate and graduate education, but the final product is to be "degree-neutral", in keeping with the Council’s stated positions.

As you can see, we have much to consider at the April meeting. I hope that you will all be able to attend and assist in shaping the future of the Council of Academic Programs. See you in Jacksonville!