An Historical Perspective

In the late 1970's I started receiving a number of strange telephone calls. There was one telephone call from a person who introduced himself as being with a major U.S. corporation. He had just been hired as their O.D. consultant. He had no training in O.D. and no experience in O.D. His boss wanted him to do team building with the corporation's top team. And, the caller wanted information on a weekend workshop he could attend in order to learn how to do this. About the same time, I got another call from a proffessor at a major Midwest university. His dean wanted him to start an O.D. program at their university. He had no training in O.D. and no experience in O.D. and he wanted the name of a good book he could read. A local O.D. academic program had used their students to run a "touchy feelie" T-group in a local manufacturing division of a major U.S. corporation. A member of their personnel department reported to me that almost this entire group had returned from this program engaging in behaviors that company management felt were inappropriate for their company. And, most had been fired or transferred.

After a number of such experiences, it became increasingly obvious that there is a Gresham's Law of O.D. in which "bad O.D." would eventually drive out "good O.D.". I felt we should put some boundaries around this new field that we were calling O.D. Not everyone who attended a weekend workshop on O.D. should be able to lay claim to doing O.D. and being an O.D. person. I felt this new field needed to become a profession and in order to become a profession a number of things were needed. The most important were: 1) a code of ethics, 2) a statement on the unique body of skill and knowledge which O.D. people must possess in order to do O.D., and 3) some kind of visible boundary around the field so that the public could tell who had some competence in O.D. and who might or might not be competent.

I am a charter member of the OD Network and was a member of the OD Network Board of Directors from 1979 to 1981. I tried to get them interested in developing an O.D. Code of Ethics and building the field of O.D. into a profession. I was told, "We are not that kind of an organization". So, I decided to do it myself with help from The O.D. Institute.

In 1981 I wrote the first O.D. Code of Ethics. It was published in the O.D. Institute's monthly newsletter and people were asked for comments. A revised version was published in the 1983 edition of The International Registry of O.D. Professionals and O.D. Handbook. In the fall of 1981, Dr. William Gellermann, RODC agreed to take on this task. He has done a tremendous job of writing and revising and rewriting The O.D. Code of Ethics in order to develop a code that could be used worldwide by O.D. people in all kinds of settings. I has now gone through some 22 revisions and has been translated into at least four languages. In 1984 Bill was given The Outstanding O.D. Consultant of the Year Award for his work in developing The O.D. Code of Ethics.

NTL had gotten itself sued by "certifying" that certain people would do good work. We did not want to get into that kind of difficulty. So, we decided that instead of certying people we would register people. We immediately had some very heated disucssions as to who could be registered and who was competent to decide who was competent. I felt that there should be some kind of objective criteria. Others were adamantly opposed. The problem seemed unsolvable. So, in good O.D. fashion we found an integrative solution. We did both. We established the initials RODP (Registered O.D. Professional) for those who judged themselves to be competent. And, we established the initials RODC (Registered O.D. Consultant) for those who met more stringent requirements. We are not yet completely happy with either of these requirements and have a committee working to improve them.

In looking at the requirements for qualifying to use the initials RODC, it seemed there was obviously a need for a knowledge test of some kind. Dr. W. Warner Burke is a member of The O.D. Institute's Advisory Board. We asked him if he would do this for us and he said "Yes". In 1983 Warner completed work on "The Assessment Questionnaire for Knowledge and Understanding of O.D.". (In 1990 Warner Burke was given The Oustanding O.D. Consultant of the Year Award for this and his other important contributions to the field of O.D.) The questionnaire he developed was based on questions proposed by students and then sent to 100 highly qualified, currently practicing U.S. O.D. people. Questions were not drawn from an explicitely defined O.D. knowledge base because that had as yet not been done. There were no questions on ethics and no input from the international O.D. community. Dr. Donald Van Eynde, ROCD has now revised this test. (In 1996, Dr. Donald Van Eynde, RODC was given The Oustanding O.D. Consultant of the Year Award for this and his other major contributions to the field of O.D.)

We also became concerned over what students were learning, and ... more importantly ... what they were not learning. Well over half the OD/OB academic programs in the USA do not teach the O.D. Code of Ethics, and do not subscribe to current literature being published in the field. It is our opinion that most students on graduation have never written a published paper.

In developing a test on the knowledge and skill necessary for being competent in O.D. and in trying to evaluate the knowledge and skill needed in order to be competent, it became increasingly obvious that the field needed to define the knowledge and skill necessary for competence in O.D. We in The O.D. Institute and we who are working in O.D. are very grateful to Roland Sullivan, RODC, Dr. Gary McLean, RODC, and Dr. William Rockwell, RODC, and their team for the tremendous amount of time and effort they invested in developing a statement on the knowledge and skill necessary for competence in O.D. (In 1997, Roland Sullivan, RODC was given The Outstanding O.D. Consultant of the Year Award for this and his other important contributions to the field O.D.)

A committee headed by Dr. Terry Armstrong, RODC has developed criteria for the accreditation of OD/OB academic programs and we are now accrediting OD/OB academic programs that meet these criteria. We are currently the only organization in the world that accredits OD/OB academic programs. (In 1997, Dr. Terry Armstrong, RODC was given The Outstanding O.D. Consultant of the Year Award for this and his other important contributions to the field O.D.)

Dr. Donald W. Cole RODC
(Registered O.D. Consultant)
Management/Clinical Psychologist