The History of the National Council of Schools and
Programs of Professional Psychology (NCSPP)
George Stricker, Ph.D., Adelphi University
The historical account that
follows is a selection from a longer history that was written for the 1995
New Orleans metaconference.
This abbreviated version necessarily omits much that is of interest from
the brief but exciting 
history
of NCSPP.
The intellectual agenda for
professional schools was set in 1973 by the Vail Conference.
The Psy.D., the degree that made it possible to expand training beyond the
major research universities, had achieved credibility by this time. More
importantly for the development of professional schools, Adelphi University
had shown that it was possible for a program to develop in a small college
setting, and Nicholas Cummings had developed the notion of the free-standing
school in California. The stage was now set for the rapid advancement of
professional schools into the forefront of training in clinical psychology
and for the development of NCSPP. Following the Vail Conference, many professional
schools either were founded or were in the process of being founded.
Nicholas Cummings, after his
resignation as president of the California School of Professional Psychology,
was instrumental
in the initial formation of NCSPP. He contacted all of the professional schools
that he considered to be serious,
and then scheduled an all-day meeting the day before the APA convention in
August 1976. Acting as president pro tern, he convened the meeting, established
a membership of the 19 professional schools that had been invited and were
present, and charged the group with its first task: defining a professional
school of psychology. He then conducted a voice election in which Gordon
Derner was elected as the acting 
president of NCSPP. The following year,
when the organization met for a second time and formalized its existence,
Derner was elected as the first president. An Executive Board was formed
with Paul Clement serving as Vice-President, Maurice Zemlick as Secretary-Treasurer,
and Donald Peterson as Member-at-large. The task of NCSPP included the gathering
and exchange of information, the developing of standards, and attending to
matters that influenced professional psychology. The original membership
was to be of schools of professional psychology, not simply programs that
agreed with the philosophy of the organization. Membership in the organization
was by school, not by individual, and each school was entitled to send two
representatives to the annual meeting.
Of all of the initial tasks,
the only one that was addressed consistently was the exchange of information.
The early
meetings of NCSPP were attended by the executive officers of each of the
programs, usually White men, and they spent
much of the time describing developments in their programs, congratulating
themselves about their accomplishments, and defying the powers that be at
APA. Unfortunately, the nature of the professional schools at the time was
such as to lead to a changing membership each year, a situation that made
any continuity of development impossible. Although dues were charged to each
member school, there was little expenditure and the organization was little
more than a debating society. 
The two major topics of debate
were whether the Ph.D. or the Psy.D. was the preferred degree designation
for professional
programs and whether free- standing or university-affiliated programs were
better. In 1981, Bruce Weiss made a motion that NCSPP adopt a two-year moratorium
on discussion of the Psy.D. vs. Ph.D. and free-standing vs. university-affiliation
issues. The motion was not adopted, but the sense of it had already been
captured by the decision to hold the La Jolla conference, and these topics
rarely have surfaced since that time. Instead, particularly under the leadership
of Donald Peterson, the second president of NCSPP, the focus of the organization
turned inward toward self-study, and the impetus was given to the series
of conferences that have served to define NCSPP. The first conference sponsored
by NCSPP was in La Jolla in 1981, and marked a turn from rhetoric to action
in the history of the group.
A major step in the growth
of NCSPP occurred in 1985, under the leadership of Joanne Callan, when
the organization formally
was incorporated. At this time, membership in NCSPP was reserved for programs
that were APA accredited, with associate membership for schools seeking accreditation,
and observer status reserved for developing programs.
The Mission Bay conference,
in 1986, set the standard for professional education and training, and
was followed by a series
of conferences that explicated various compo
nents of the professional school
model. Following the Puerto Rico conference, in 1989, the Executive Committee
was expanded to allow for broader ethnic minority participation, and a publishing
contract with APA assured that conference proceedings would receive widespread
dissemination. A similar expansion of the Executive Committee and of membership
representation later recognized the contribution and participation of women.
Most recently, although the acronym NCSPP remains, the name of the organization
was changed to the National Council of Schools and Programs of Professional
Psychology. This reflects the admission of programs, regardless of organizational
structure, to NCSPP, as long as they subscribe to the philosophy of professional
training for which the NCSPP stands. When APA restructured its Committee
on Accreditation, two seats were reserved for representatives from NCSPP.
NCSPP now is poised to influence professional development as a respected
and important participant in graduate training.
