President Column: Updates from the 2025 Mid-Winter Board Meeting
Joe Miles Ph.D.
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On January 24 and 25th, the Board held its annual Midwinter Meeting in Nashville, Tennessee. It is always energizing and fun to get together with a group of people who care deeply about the Division and the theory, research, and practice of group psychology and group psychotherapy! (If you haven’t been on the Board, or haven’t been on the Board in a while, please consider nominating yourself for a position in the future or joining a committee!) The 2025 Midwinter Meeting was a productive one, that aimed to welcome and orient new Board members, and to set goals to grow and strengthen the Division, increase member engagement, continue to advocate for and support the specialty of Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy, and expand the reach of our group research and practice. I wanted to use this column to share a couple highlights from the meeting, including some continuing and some new efforts, along with an invitation to join these efforts.
One major effort the Board discussed continuing to support is Group Specialty Council and the re-certification of Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy as a specialty. The Board will be continuing to financially support the efforts of the Council and will submit a comment in support of the specialty renewal petition that was submitted December 31, 2024. (Additional comments can be submitted here.) On a related note, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Council and, in particular, Noelle Lefforge for authoring the petition. This raises, though, the need to plan for the next set of leaders who will shepherd through the next petition. Another component of this effort is to continue to contribute to the data-driven case for why not requiring training in group psychotherapy in graduate training is unethical, an effort that Martyn Whittingham and others have been (and are) working hard to further. We also discussed the need to continue to help maintain the Evidence-Based Group Psychotherapy website. If you are interested in helping support these efforts, please reach out to the Research and Practice Domain Representatives, Martin Kivlighan and Jill Paquin, respectively.
As always, growing our membership and engaging current members will be another important effort this year. We are making sure all members have access to the Division listserv (members can, of course, opt out), as this is an important line of communication. Our Student Representatives, Ilana Ander and Kun Wang, have also set up a student listserv to bolster communication among students (as an aside, we are excited to welcome these our Student Reps. and launch our new model of having two Reps. in staggered, two-year terms). Another way that we plan to engage membership is through exciting experiential group offerings that our Education and Training and Practice Domain Representatives, Vinny Dehili and Jill Paquin, will be creating. Be on the lookout for more information about these offerings!
Finally, we are putting together a task force that will explore ways in which we can use our group research and practice in response to respond to natural and manmade disasters, violence, and other pressing issues facing society today. My hope is that we will find ways to use our expertise to actively improve lives and create a more socially just world, rather than issuing statements that may be perceived as hollow or alienating.
Looking ahead, I wanted to remind you that award nominations are due June 1, 2025. Information about each of the awards, including eligibility and how to apply can be found here. Please consider nominating someone (or self-nominating) to recognize the outstanding work being done in group psychology and group psychotherapy! If you are able, I hope you also plan to attend the 2025 APA Convention in Denver, CO. Our Program Chair, Kristin Miserocchi, has been hard at work planning some exciting programming and it will be a wonderful opportunity for reconnecting with fellow group folks!