The Early Career Professionals Committee (ECP) was established in 2007 to provide a source of support for practitioners, scientists, and educators during a crucial period of professional identity development. Currently, the ECP annually awards grants for distinguished research proposals that promote issues related to psychology and law through the Grant-In-Aid program. However, an award program for early career clinicians who practice at the intersection of psychology and law has never existed.
It is important to recognize early career as there are often a myriad of novel challenges and concerns that they are required to navigate. Many of these concerns are often introduced after their graduate studies are completed. These challenges may include obtaining licensure, establishing private practices, and seeking continuing education credits. Without support to overcome these challenges, ECPs may struggle to advance their careers, which has implications for their ability to become active and contributing members to AP-LS. AP-LS can play a vital role in helping to offer support for the needs of early career professionals. According to Cantone and colleagues (2019) less than 1% of doctoral level early career professionals feel that AP-LS addresses their needs “extremely well.” Additionally, the ECP would like to further the AP-LS mission to increase research, education, and training around diversity, equity, and inclusion.
This grant seeks to bridge a much-needed gap for early career professionals as well as increase satisfaction with AP-LS as a whole. The ECP intends to award five $500 grants.
Who is eligible?
Professionals who identify as early career (per APA less than ten years since graduating) and are currently or have the intention to practice primarily as practitioners. Since the ECP already funds a grant program for researchers, this grant program will serve those who are primarily engaged in the clinical practice of psychology and law.
The reason we are choosing to restrict eligibility to these individuals is to ensure we can support those whose careers are most directly impacted by the challenges faced by those in clinical practice rather than those for whom clinical practice is a supplementary component of their professional careers. If the amount of grants increases in the future, we could explore expanding eligibility more broadly.
What types of activities are supported?
As mentioned previously, there are a plethora of activities that early career practitioners engage in that would be useful to fund. These may include, applying for licensure, funds to support preparing for the licensure examination, continuing education activities, developing a private practice, consultation activities, and activities that enhance treatment and evaluation skill sets to name a few. Kois and Chauhan (2016) noted that forensic evaluators did not report consistent engagement in activities that work to increase cultural competence. Therefore, applications that highlight activities geared toward diversity, equity, and inclusion will be strongly encouraged and weighed.
Email all materials to ecp@ap-ls.org
- Cover letter that includes:
- First and last name
- Year last degree obtained
- Email address
- Telephone number
- Mailing address
- A letter of intent (1,500 word maximum) that describes
- their current professional roles and connection to the field of psychology and law
- how they intend to use the grant
- how receiving the grant will enhance their practice and career growth
- how receiving the grant will further the practice of psychology and law
- how receiving the grant will contribute to broader impacts to society and the broader mission of AP-LS to increase efforts in diversity, equity, and inclusion
- Proposed budget with budget justifications and timeline
- CV
The ECP Chair will submit the completed applications to its Professional Development Sub-Committee for a blind review. The Professional Development Sub-Committee will identify the proposals that contribute to the AP-LS ECP mission as a whole and rate each proposal on several scales, following a similar process used for the ECP Grant-in-Aid. The proposals will be assessed using the following scales (1: very low to 9: very high).
- Proposal Quality: Does the proposal communicate a clear need for support and how such training will support the practitioners during a crucial period of professional identity development?
- Proposal Contribution: Does the proposal specify an overall contribution to the field of psychology and law?
- Proposal Originality: Does the proposal further the practice of psychology and law, such as through development of novel clinical approaches, resources, or new skillsets?
- Broader Impacts: Does the proposal have the potential to benefit society and contribute to specific, desired societal outcomes, such as advancing efforts in DEI within the field of psychology and law?
The Professional Development Sub-Committee will return the blinded proposals with an overall rating score and funding recommendation.
The ECP requests awardees to follow-up with a post-award report with how the grant enhanced their clinical practice within one year of the scheduled activities.
Awardees will also be encouraged to write summaries of these experiences that can be included in a variety of AP-LS communication (i.e. website, annual EC report, social media, conference materials) in order to highlight the ways in which AP-LS is working to address the needs of early career professionals and also increase efforts regarding diversity, equity, and inclusive practices.