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Scientist- practitioner model The Scienctist-Practitioner Model, also called the Boulder Model, is a system of education that is used by many graduate programs in clinical psychology and other applied fields of Psychology. The model was advocated and developed primarily by David Shakow and a series of committees which he was a part of. At the Boulder Conference of 1949 the purposed model for training within clinical graduate programs was presented. Here, it received accreditation by the psychological community and the American Psychological Association (APA). The goal of the Boulder Model is to increase scientific growth within the field by developing graduate students’ background in psychological theory, field work, and research methodology. The Boulder Model urges clinicians to use empirical research to base their applied practice; and conversely, to use their experiences from applied practice to shape their research questions. Therefore advancing scientific thinking within the field of Psychology. This model argues the importance of clinical psychologists possessing the abilities of a competent researchers and also the ability to apply empirical knowledge to their methodology of treating patients.

History
Before World War II, psychology was primarily an academic discipline, with just a few thousand clinicians and industrial/organizational psychologists. And at the start of war, only about 6 percent of men and 4 percent of women had college degrees, and more than half of the U.S. population had no more than an eighth-grade education. In the aftermath of World War II several factors encouraged the growth, recognition, and professionalization of clinical psychology. In an attempt to avoid the low dissatisfaction among veterans after World War I the federal government made proactive steps to ensure that the mental health needs of Second World War veterans' would be met. So, as more “shell-shocked” veterans returned to the United States the demand for professional clinical psychologists boomed. The increased societal need for clinical psychologists combined with the allocation of federal funds to graduate education programs and to the G.I. Bill for veterans accelerated the nation’s postwar economic development by igniting scientific innovation. Around 6 million of the 13 million veterans who served during World War II used the G.I. Bill to go to college, fundamentally changing the demographics of higher education. In the decades after the war, thousands of veterans with an interest in psychology went on to become practitioners, with paid training positions in graduate school and jobs waiting for them at Veteran Administrative (VA) hospitals. As a result of psychology graduate programs flourishing with resources and applicants inconsistencies in clinician training were illuminated between graduate programs. These discrepancies in training methods called for swift action by the psychological academic community to determine a set model for training clinical psychologists.

Development of the Model
David Shakow is largely responsible for the development of the Boulder Model. He worked as the chief psychologist at Worcester State Hospital when he wrote his first draft of the model, Shakow’s 1941 American Association for Applied Psychology report. In his report he outlined a training plan for clinical psychology graduate students. It stated that within a 4 year Ph.D. program, the first year would be designated to establishing a systematic foundation in psychology and applied sciences. The second year would be allotted for learning psychometric and therapeutic principles and practices. The third year would be focused on gaining supervised field experience, through an internship; and the forth would allow for the completion of a research dissertation. Overall, Shakow stresses the importance of a graduate student obtaining the abilities to complete diagnoses, therapy, and scientific research throughout his proposal. His drafted proposal for training was extremely well received throughout the psychology community, although some voiced concerns that it weighed to heavily on psychopathology due to Shakow’s professional bias. Minor modifications were done at the Penn State Conference in 1942 and then at the Vineland Training School in 1944. As a result in 1945, Shakow’s report was published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. Meanwhile the increasing demand for professional psychologists prompted the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) and the VA to greatly increase funding for clinical psychology graduate programs under the newly formed APA. With increased funds from the federal government, APA president, Carl Rogers asked David Shakow to chair The Committee on Training in Clinical Psychology (CTCP). The CTCP was given the tasks of formulating a recommended program for training, setting standards for graduate institutions, and visiting and reporting upon the institutions offering a clinical graduate degrees. Shakow presented his published model to the members in the CTCP and asked for their critics; again it was reviewed with little dispute, and in 1947, it had been submitted to the APA and received endorsement. By December of 1947, the report was known as the Shakow Report and was published in American Psychologist as the set agenda for the upcoming conference to discuss training within clinical graduate programs. By 1949, clinical psychology had a recommended program for training students, standards for accreditation of doctoral programs, increasing amounts of students with strong government support, and a post war environment filled with employment opportunities. The CTCP had made great progress in regulating the professionalization of clinical psychology, but the USPHS worried that the rapid expansion of the field left less time for interactions between the VA hospitals, mental health centers, and university graduate psychology departments. The reported inconsistent ways of thinking and practicing among psychology graduate programs prompted the USPHS to join forces with the APA to back a conference to determine principle and procedures to train clinical psychologists. At a joint meeting of the USPHS and the CTCP on September 5, 1948, a six-week conference to discuss the problems in clinical training was suggested. The conference would be sponsored by the APA and would be granted $40,000 in financial backing by the USPHS. In January of 1949, a planning meeting for the upcoming conference was held in Chicago by members of the CTCP, representatives from the APA board of directors, and chairman, David Shakow, to discuss the details of the conference. Details including its name, attendants, and location as well as other things. The planning committee of 1949, agreed to name the conference, The Boulder Conference on Graduate Education in Clinical Psychology, and invited participants from a variety of disciplines. Majority of the conference attendance was made up of CTCP members, representatives from each of the university training programs evaluated during the 1948-1949 site visits, and of other department chairs of general and experimental programs. Also one psychiatrist, social worker, representative for the VA and representative for internship centers within hospitals and clinics were invited to speak for their respective disciplines. The invitation announced that the conference would be held at the University of Colorado at Boulder, thereby allowing participants to attend the proceeding annual meeting of the APA scheduled in Denver.

The Boulder Conference
In 1949, The Boulder Conference met from August 20th till September 3rd and contained 73 representatives of academic and applied psychology, medical, and educational disciplines. This conference discussed the professionalization of psychology and agreed upon a standard method of training psychologists. From this consensus the Boulder Model was established. The model was aimed to train and educate graduate clinical psychology students to adhere to the scientific method and empirical research within their day-to-day practices. To meet this objective, the model purposes three key training medians to help students master the field; attending seminars and lecture to strength their background in psychology, monitored field work, and research training. It is known that students will ultimately choose to specialize in either research academia or applied practice, but the model purposes that having sufficient knowledge in the entire field will enhance a psychologist’s ability to perform their specialty.

Criticisms of the Model
Despite the Boulder Model's observable success in training graduate psychology students, it was met with increasing debate and criticism after its installment in 1949. The debate centers around 2 main critics. The first argues that there is no validity supporting the assumption that the Boulder Model creates clinical psychologists proficient in both research and practice. The second critic poses the question of whether the skills needed for practice in clinical psychology are compatible for the strengths needed for research. Criticisms were raised when the model was established, but continued to accumulate until its peak in 1965 at the Chicago Conference. Here it was recommended that clinical psychologists graduate programs found a different method of training psychologists who planned to focus their careers on the practitioner portion of the field. This idea was reinforced by the Clark Committee of 1967, led by Donald Clark, the committee developed a practitioner-oriented graduate training program in 1968, and presented it at the Vail Conference in 1973. This model was accepted readily to coexist with the already established Boulder Model which would still be used in psychology Ph.D programs.

Core Tenets of the Model Today
Core Tenets included in the current Boulder Model:
 * Giving psychological assessment, testing, and intervention in accordance with scientifically based protocols
 * Accessing and integrating scientific findings to make informed healthcare decisions for patients
 * Questioning and testing hypotheses that are relevant to current healthcare;
 * Building and maintaining effective cross-disciplinary relationships with professionals in other fields
 * Research-based training and support to other health professions in the process of providing psychological care;
 * Contribute to practice-based research and development to improve the quality of health care.