Clinical
practica:
The program has its own research and training
clinic that is located on campus close to faculty and student
offices and classrooms. Practicum in the clinic is required
of all second-year students and is elected by many advanced
students. The clinic practicum has several important features.
First, all clinical activities are scientifically guided, and
the clinic is an active place for clinical-scientific research.
Second, it provides exposure to a wide variety of outpatient
mental health problems and emergencies in a population that
represents a fairly broad cross-section of the community (only
a small percentage of cases are students). Students have opportunities
to observe more advanced students and supervisors engaged in
interviewing, assessment, and implementation of treatment. Third,
with the exception of Dr. Kerr, an adjunct faculty member, all
supervisors at the Psychology Clinic are our own regular faculty,
each trained in a scientifically-oriented clinical program.
They provide supervision for small "teams" that consist of one
or two second-year students and one or two advanced students,
with the more experienced clinicians modeling integration for
novices, while incidentally getting some informal supervisory
experience in the process. Fourth, because many of the supervisors
teach the required and elective clinical courses in psychopathology,
assessment, and treatment, they are quite familiar with the
students and what they know, and can coach them in how to put
that knowledge into practice.
The Psychology Clinic provides an excellent environment for an introduction to the practice of clinical psychology and for conducting clinical research. The director is Thomas Joiner, who is the Bright-Burton Professor of Psychology, and an internationally known psychopathology researcher. He has implemented policies and procedures that are aimed at facilitating students' integration of science and practice. First, he has made it clear that students are expected to use empirically supported treatments with their patients. That is, where there are clearly supported treatments for patients' primary diagnosis, those treatments are to be used. Where there are no clearly supported treatments, treatment plans are to be developed with psychological science as the starting point. The director regularly spot-checks patient files to encourage proper documentation, accurate diagnosis, and diagnosis-based and empirically supported treatment plans. Second, all students are required to regularly engage in ongoing research, based at the clinic. This has the advantage of reiterating the role of science in treatment, and of providing students with clinic-based research training. Finally, students enrolled in practica at our training clinic meet weekly with the Clinic Director to discuss pertinent readings, to view training tapes, or to listen to presentations by faculty or psychologists from the community. Dr. Joiner also regularly engages in role plays of therapy sessions of patients that student therapists have found to be particularly challenging. These role plays have received rave reviews by the students. All of these characteristics of the setting and supervisors facilitate modeling of and insist upon the application of theory and research to a wide variety of "real-world" clinical problems.
Students are eligible for practicum placements in community agencies beginning in their second year in the program. Supervision at all practicum sites is by psychologists who have been approved by our faculty. Available placements are quite diverse, ranging from child learning disability assessments and outpatient treatment of adjustment disorders to work with incarcerated offenders and chronically disturbed psychiatric inpatients. Varied racial and ethnic minorities and socioeconomic status are also represented. Most students have more than one such placement and it is not uncommon for individuals to accumulate 2,000 or more hours of supervised clinical experience before internship. All of these community placements provide stipends to students for their clinical work.
Pre-doctoral
Internship:
All graduate students in the clinical psychology program are required to complete an APA-accredited predoctoral internship. Although there are two accredited internships in close proximity to the university, our students apply to internships all across the country. Despite the "supply and demand" concerns about predoctoral internships in clinical psychology, our students are successful in obtaining their top-ranked choices of APA-accredited internships. Some examples of the internships obtained recently by our students include: University of Washington, Boston V.A., Virginia Treatment Center for Children, University of Chicago Medical School, Brown University Consortium, Medical University of South Carolina, and Western Psychiatric Center.
