The Education and Training Oversight Committee (ETOC) has had a busy year! Brought to life in January 2025, the ETOC coordinates the ISSTD educational components across its various education and training opportunities, in line with ISSTD’s strategic plan.
Over the past year, the ETOC has organized and supported several tasks:
- Increased collaboration and communication across ISSTD’s education- and training-related Committees.
- Reviewed the standardized hiring process for ISSTD’s faculty members.
- Monitored and supported the structural changes associated with the amalgamation of the Webinar Committee and the Virtual and Regional Conference Committee into a single Virtual Training Committee.
- Promoted the call to increase the number of conference proposals submitted at the advanced content level.
- Reviewed processes for crisis and contingency planning for in-person events.
- Increased communication about education opportunities through the Quarterly Education Article in ISSTD News.
Perhaps our most intensive project over the past year, the ETOC is working on revising and operationalizing the ISSTD Core Areas of Knowledge (CAOK). The CAOK were originally developed to organize and sequence key knowledge-based competencies for clinicians working with people who have experienced complex trauma and dissociation. The CAOK are used to classify ISSTD educational content. As ISSTD prepares to implement a certification program, these classifications will become important in determining the extent of a participant’s degree of exposure to content across different competences.
As leadership of the ETOC, we are committed to ensuring that ISSTD continues its mission to provide leading-edge professional education about the phenomenology, diagnosis, and treatment of complex trauma and dissociation.