Integral Education: The CIIS Blog

Interview: Bryant Welch, Chair of the Clinical Psychology Program

By PAULINE E. REIF, alumna of Writing and Consciousness MFA program

Bryant Welch, JD, PhD, chair of the Clinical Psychology (PsyD) program, comes to CIIS with more than 30 years of experience as a nationally prominent psychologist. A Harvard College and Harvard Law School graduate, he received his PhD in clinical psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1976. He’s held faculty appointments at the University of University of North Carolina and George Washington University. He is a research associate graduate of the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute. From 1986 to 1993, Welch initiated and ran the American Psychological Association Practice Directorate, leading organized psychology through one of its most successful advocacy eras.

Much can be said of Dr. Welch’s broad experience and leadership in law, psychology, and politics. As a clinician, researcher, teacher, advocate, activist, and author he brings to the CIIS community a wealth of knowledge, skill, and passion.

I recently spoke to Welch about what brought him to CIIS and why he views it as a “wonderful home” in which to continue his work.

Pauline: Let’s begin with how you came to CIIS. Why CIIS for you?

Bryant: I came to CIIS because this is a uniquely exciting time in psychology. For the first time in my career as a psychologist we have this very exciting convergence of neuroscience and spirituality and what was at one time dismissed as “West Coast Woo-Woo” is now, lo and behold, being substantiated by Western neuroscience. That is a huge intellectual development with all kinds of implications. I think for CIIS it represents an astonishing validation for the vision of its founding fathers, namely that Eastern thought had a lot to inform Western psychology and Western culture. This leads to a variety of implications for the practice of psychology. We’ve now got a critical mass of integrated information that we’ve just not had in the past. And we’ve got new treatments that are flowering as a result of this convergence. So, I was looking for a place where I could work and integrate this new information and disseminate it into the mental health field and also into the larger world community. 

I’ve also always been interested in social justice and politics and been particularly intrigued by the psychological consequences of injustice and oppression. In my book written a few years ago called, "State of Confusion: Political Manipulation and the Assault on the American Mind" (Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martins Press, June, 2008), I explore how people are being manipulated and trying to show psychologically how that kind of manipulation exploits psychological vulnerabilities but also makes people sicker in the process of doing it. So I’m very interested in the psychology of what oppression does to people whatever form it’s in and hope to build a strong social justice component focusing on answering the psychological questions surrounding these issues. I see CIIS as an incredible place to address these goals.

Also, when I first came here for interviews, I loved the faculty and thought that the administration seemed to be very, very trustworthy and so, it felt like a potentially wonderful home and I feel that it is.

Pauline: So CIIS is the kind of place one comes home to, a community of like minds, but it’s also a place where one is stretched as well.

Bryant: Yes. I’ve been to some really good schools and I’ve been with some really good institutions and I’ve never been in a place as stimulating as this…never. You know, I was on the Harvard campus in the 60s and the early 70s and that was pretty exciting but I’m telling you it’s nothing compared to this.

And then you’ve got the people here, an extremely bright faculty who actually practice what they teach. It’s just a remarkable place, an extraordinary culture, that’s very different from others I’ve been a part of.

Pauline: Can you address in a little more detail what makes the PsyD program at CIIS unique? Why come here?

Bryant: Yes. There are a lot of things I can say about why it’s unique. I think the most unique thing about the culture here is that thing that’s hardest to put into words that I don’t think a person can understand by reading a course catalog.

(Visit CIIS' YouTube channel to watch Bryant Welch talk more about the PsyD program)

Second, issues like cultural diversity, social justice and subjective human experience are revered here and people here—actually—live their respect for those aspects of human experience.

In terms of our program compared to other programs, our students have tremendous academic flexibility. The range of things our students can study here wouldn’t be allowed in other more conventional programs. This is evident in their dissertations, written on subjects that include spiritual issues and subjective human experience.

It’s also important to note that we’re one of three Clinical Psychology Doctoral program facilities in the State of California that’s been approved for Mental Health Stipends to support graduate students who are working in underserved populations. These internships meet the APA standards even though serving this population is not an APA requirement. These programs tend not to have as much money nor provide as big a stipend as the APA programs offer, but our students want to work in these programs and we support them in these situations. As I’ve said, this is a very, very humanistic and spiritual place with just tremendous emphasis on subjective human experience.

Don Hanlon Johnson on Somatics and Mind-Body Integration

Don Hanlon Johnson, professor of somatics in the School of Professional Psychology at CIIS, recently appeared on the radio show of CIIS alum Michael Ostrolenk. Hanlon Johnson, who trained as a Jesuit priest in the 1960s, tells Ostrolenk about gaining an awareness of the “vital reality” of the mind/body connection. Hanlon Johnson founded the Somatic Psychology program at CIIS in 1983.

Listen to Becoming Embodied: Somatics and Mind, Body, Integration

Don Hanlon Johnson's website >>

Crossword Puzzles, Sudoku, and…Rubrics?

By PHILIP BROOKS, associate professor in the Integral Counseling Psychology program and a long-time member of the CIIS Integral Education Committee

I recently attended the second annual Expanding the Circle conference, an inspirational and informative national conference sponsored by CIIS and held at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco, which focused on “creating an inclusive environment in higher education for LGBTQ students and studies.” In one of the concurrent sessions on assessment, "Measuring LGBTQ Student Success and the Role of Assessment in Academic and Student Affairs," I “came out” as a person who enjoys creating rubrics. Given the tenor of the conversation during that meeting, and the perceived level of interest in rubrics at CIIS, I believe this is a minority position.

For me, filling in the cells of a rubric matrix is a challenging brainteaser. It's fun to think about what exceptional performance and very poor performances looks like, and then wrestle with the spectrum of performances between the two. I offer the following row of cells on the hard to define, but clinically important dimension of presence, from a recent rubric that the Integral Counseling Psychology department created to use in our admissions process. (Presence is one of seven dimensions considered.)

Presence

Is engaged in the moment even if nervous. Is fully "alive" in the role play as therapist and client, Exhibits a non-defensive openness and personal clarity.

Mostly engaged. Performance anxiety may limit interview, but it is acknowledged. Makes "good enough" connection. Is able to show vulnerability.

Not fully "here" in interview, is in and out. May or may not acknowledge anxiety but can't transcend it. Shows a limited capacity for revealing self, insensitive to others.

Presents as disconnected or vague. May be reactive in interview, and be brittle when challenged. Seems unaware of self in the moment. Emotionally unavailable.

I can understand the resistance to rubrics, much as I can understand why people don't warmly embrace thinking in terms of mission, goals, and objectives. It seems to smack of a corporatization of The Academy, and a move toward the science of teaching and away from the art of this profession.

In actually working within this paradigm over the past seven years, my experience has been different. I've come around to sensing that it's fair to spell out what we expect students to gain from our classes, and it seems fair to then assess them based on transparent, understandable, and consistent variables.

Rubrics help students understand what is expected of them in relatively concrete ways. A well- constructed and well-utilized rubric gives a student or trainee a sense of where they are, and a reasonably defined sense of where improvement lies.

A major roadblock to the creation of clear and creative rubrics is that it takes time. It takes time to struggle with the nuances that differentiate fair performance from good performance, and it takes time to get feedback on the drafts, as well as consensus within the faculty as to the accuracy of the measures that are produced. I found the free website Rubistar to be particularly helpful. As a non-tech guy, I also found that Rubistar was easy to use (and they give examples).

Thus, if you want to generate a set of expectations for writing assignments which you can use and modify semester after semester, or if you want to specify levels of attainment of counseling skills, consider creating a rubric. The effort may help you clarify your thinking, provide more transparent measures of performance and/or growth, and help generate quantifiable data for assessment. I hope this was helpful for you, for me it’s a reminder to get back to work on those Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) that we have identified for our Final Integrative Seminar class.