Research and Professional Development 1 - Becoming a Clinician Educator: Why “Tenure-track Dropout” Can Be an Excellent Career Path

Have you ever noticed that most people at ABCT either only do science or see patients in private practice? Do you find yourself wondering if there is another way?

Psychologists are taught to develop four broad areas of expertise: clinical work, research, advocacy, and teaching. Yet when we were in our doctoral programs, all five of us felt pressure to get a tenure-track position. If we did not do that, it was assumed that our other option was private practice. Research and clinical work, often separately, tend to dominate discussions of and in our field. This panel will examine how focusing on practicing, teaching, and supervising empirically-supported assessment and treatments can lead to opportunities for advocacy, academic-community partnerships, clinical education and other academic leadership, training grants, and conducting research in a clinical setting. Along the way, it will also refine your clinical work!

This light-hearted yet informative professional development seminar will examine various pathways to becoming a clinician-educator, including in academic medical centers, traditional University departments (e.g., psychology), and large group practices that take commercial insurance. We will discuss discovering your own professional values, managing your personal life, ways to get more direct training in teaching and clinical work, and ways to forge a career that combines the parts you like best about being a psychologist (and allows for flexibility and growth along the way!).

We will use pair shares and interactive activities (like the card sort for professional values) to help participants think about the kind of careers they want to have and how to take proactive steps to get the positions that align with their educational and clinical values. These discussions will include examining quality-of-life considerations like work-life balance, raising a family, and avoiding burnout in a helping profession that demands a great deal from you personally. We will also share our varied paths to becoming Clinician Educators and discuss the role of mentorship, sponsorship, and experimentation in building our respective careers.

This session does not offer continuing education credit.