APA Accreditation. The Counseling and Mental Health Center has a long and distinguished history of providing pre-doctoral internship training in professional psychology. As the first university counseling center-based internship program to be accredited by the American Psychological Association, we have enjoyed continuous accreditation for over 40 years. This reflects CMHC's commitment to training as part of its overall mission. The education and training of psychology graduate students has always had high importance because we believe in the concept of contributing to the advancement of our profession. Additionally, we believe that the internship program aids in the continuing education and workplace morale of our professional staff by involving them in challenging and stimulating training activities.
Overall training goal. The overall goal of the internship program is to train students in the core duties of a psychologist working in the context of a university counseling center. While we assume that our interns will aim for a counseling center position as their first job, we also believe that the functions and services of our center will prepare interns well for a variety of positions, especially those in outpatient settings.
Training Model In 1991, CMHC developed its own model of training, called the "Self and Systems" model. This model was the result of a year-long effort by our Training Committee to articulate our training philosophy, values, and goals. The model emphasizes training in the following areas:
The importance and mutuality of individual and systemic perspectives
Self-awareness and the integration of personal and professional growth
Pluralism (quoting the American Heritage dictionaries, pluralism has multiple, interrelated meanings, including "a conviction that various religious, ethnic, racial, and political groups should be allowed to thrive in a single society," and "the belief that no single explanatory system or view of reality can account for all the phenomena of life")
Ethical standards and practices
Professionalism and the development of professional functioning
The change process: developing a working relationship, assessment, problem definition and formulation, interventions, termination, and evaluation
The model also articulates a number of important values that we hold as a training program:
Training should be experiential and supervised
Learning is a developmental process
Respect for diversity
The agency climate provides a balance of support and challenge, and allows trainees to be learners - to own their strengths and acknowledge their areas of growth
Active trainee involvement and risk-taking, in that trainees take initiative and responsibility in the training process
Training experiences promote personal growth and responsibility
The importance of balancing responsibility to the trainee, consumer, and agency
Training experiences must go beyond the acquisition of knowledge and skill to include integration, awareness, and complex reasoning
The relationship is a key element in the change process
Apprenticeship experiences, with staff serving as role models for trainees
Peer learning
Interdisciplinary collaboration
Trainees should be socialized to the values of the profession
Social and ethical responsibility
Trainees should develop an awareness of issues of power and its impact on those with whom they work
The importance of developing professional support networks
Training experiences should promote leadership qualities and professionalism
Training Experiences. Emphasis is placed on experiential learning under close supervision, along with peer group and trainer role modeling as additional learning tools. Interactive, skill-building seminars and individual and small group tutorials are used as supplementary learning methods. Interns receive on-the-job training in the full range of university psychological services including individual and group psychotherapy, initial consultation/assessment interviewing, urgent care, clinical supervision of practicum-level trainees, and program development and outreach services. Opportunities to initiate or continue the development of one or more practice specialties are also provided.
In 1995, we initiated competency-based assessment processes in order to ascertain each intern's skills and training needs across the core service areas of the center. We constructed simulations and measures that will help gauge what training experiences might best be designed for each trainee.
Professional Role. Since the internship is typically the capstone training experience, we believe it is particularly important for interns to possess an appreciation of the professional role they will undertake once the year is completed. This includes an understanding of ethical principles and practices, an awareness of significant challenges and trends within the field, the development and implementation of life-long professional development and learning activities, a continual examination of personal world views and their impact on professional functioning, and a sense of responsibility to contribute to the welfare of the profession and society. Training staff and interns are expected to approach their work in a scholarly manner by keeping informed about the latest theory, research, and practice especially as they apply to psychological training and services in a university setting.
Diversity. The CMHC staff is strongly committed to addressing the needs of a diverse student population, and our internship program strives to incorporate and highlight issues of difference as a fundamental part of the training experience. Ethnic minority and international students represent over 40% of our student body, and we believe that our client population is a microcosm of the spectrum of cultural differences found in the larger university community.
In 1991, CMHC was one of the first university counseling centers to adopt a Statement on Diversity, as we believed that it was important to make a public statement about our values, commitments, and responsibilities in this area. In 2007, this statement was reviewed and revised by our staff in order to reflect the evolution of knowledge that has occurred over the years as well as our staff's ongoing reflection, discussion, and appreciation of these issues.
Use of Self. Regardless of the specific work activity, a primary "thread" running through all our training activities is the skill of "Use of Self" and its variants. For us, this means assisting the intern in exploring and understanding the qualities and dynamics that he or she brings to each interpersonal encounter and how these facilitate or hinder effective interactions. It also means that the intern is encouraged to become more attuned to his or her own thoughts and feelings in working with clients, and recognize how this increased self-awareness can be used to better understand client dynamics and develop effective treatment strategies. Because we believe in the working alliance as an indispensable ingredient in any helping relationship, we encourage interns to recognize, improve, and employ those personal qualities that will assist in forming effective working relationships with clients, peers, center staff, and other members of the university community.
Because our internship program is based largely on a relational, use-of-self training model, and because we believe that optimal professional development occurs within the context of self-reflection and personal exploration, our various training activities will, at times, ask interns to disclose personal information. Our training staff takes very seriously its responsibility to foster and maintain a safe, trusting, and supportive environment that will allow such disclosures to occur in accordance with the goals and objectives of our training model.
(This section is intended to satisfy Section 7.04 of the APA Ethics Code regarding our responsibility to notify applicants of the requirement for self-disclosure of personal information.)
