At the Feb 2011 meeting, APA Council voted to reduce full members' dues from the current $287 to $247 beginning in 2012. The reduction is part of an overall redesign of the association's dues schedule as proposed by the Membership Board. This action rescinds a 2011 Council decision to grant a $25 dues discount to APA members who are also members of the Federation for the Advancement of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, the Association for Psychological Science, the Society for Neuroscience, the state, provincial and territorial psychological associations and the four national ethnic minority psychological associations. The net result is that, even without the membership discount that many Division 16 members previously enjoyed, their dues will be lower than they would have been otherwise. Early career members will still enjoy reduced dues for their first eight years of membership.

The Council also approved in principle changes to the current eligibility requirements for life status members. These changes require amendments to the Association Rules and Bylaws and will be put before a vote of the full membership this Fall.

In other actions, the Council voted to:

• Adopt guidelines in the areas of parenting coordination; practice in health care delivery systems; psychological evaluations in child protection matters; assessment of and intervention with people with disabilities; evaluation of dementia and age-related cognitive change; and psychological practice with lesbian, gay and bisexual clients. These and other APA practice guidelines can be found online.
• Allow the publication of diplomate credentials in the APA Membership Directory if the credential is in a specialty or proficiency area officially recognized by APA through its Commission for the Recognition of Specialties and Proficiencies in Professional Psychology and meets other criteria as established by the Council's vote. These criteria are: the credential is offered by a non-profit group and is awarded based on a review and verification of the individual's training, licensure, ethical conduct status and an assessment of the candidate's competence in the specialty area by way of an examination.
• Approved the report of the 2010 Presidential Task Force on Advancing Practice. The work of the task force included the launch of PsycLINK, the APA practice wiki, an online resource for information sharing and collaboration amongst psychologists. Members who pay the practice assessment can visit the wiki website.
• Approved the report of the 2010 Presidential Task Force on Caregiving. The work of the task force included the creation of a Web-based resources "briefcase" for psychologists and members of the public on care-giving issues. See the brief-case website.
• Adopted as APA policy the Principles for Quality Undergraduate Education in Psychology. These principles replace an earlier version and are an outgrowth the 2008 APA National Conference on Undergraduate Education in Psychology. The guidelines articulate a set of learning goals and outcomes that should be attained by all psychology majors. See the full guidelines (PDF, 168KB).
• Received the Report of the BEA Task Force on Classroom Violence Directed Against K-12 Teachers. The work of the task force, including reports and brochures for teachers, can be found online. The full Task Force report will be available later this month on the APA website.
• Adopted a resolution affirming APA's recognition of the importance of the psychological aspects of the way humans relate to the environment and supporting psychologists' involvement in research, education and community interventions in improving public understanding of global climate change impacts and ways in which psychology can help mitigate those impacts.
• Approved a new Division 43 journal, The Family Psychologist.
• Enlarged the Committee on Early Career Psychologists from six to seven members.
• Approved the 2011 association budget, including operating expenses of $106,857,300 and forecasted revenue of $106,877,300.

A proposal to provide seats on the Council for representatives for the four ethnic minority psychological associations was postponed to be raised before the Council at its August 2011 meeting. Three of the four associations are now represented on the Council by appointed non-voting delegates; ABPsi (The Association of Black Psychologists) is represented by a non-voting Observer to Council.