Our program adheres to a practitioner-scholar model, and emphasizes the
importance of honing critical thinking skills, reading and evaluating
the current empirical literature, integrating scientific attitudes and
methods into clinical work and continuing to engage in scholarly
inquiry. We believe that professional development is best served by
immersion in clinical service, combined with intimate familiarity with
the empirical literature. In our view, well-trained
clinicians are prepared to be sophisticated consumers of, and possibly
contributors to, psychological research literature. Thus, the
scientific bases of professional psychology are an inherent part of our
rotations and seminars; we attempt to integrate the practice of
psychology with its scientific underpinnings.
We believe that a broad training in psychology is necessary for
competence as a practicing psychologist. We assume that interns enter
our program with a solid background in a variety of clinical settings,
and some experience in psychological research. Our goal is to serve as
a bridge between graduate training and independent professional
practice. We accomplish this by providing clinical experiences across a
continuum of care, thus enabling interns to experience clinical
presentations that vary widely in acuity, and by providing intensively
supervised experience in a high-quality, multi-disciplinary behavioral
health organization. To this end, we value direct clinical experience
in the context of close supervisory contact and oversight, supplemented
by didactic instruction. We view our primary responsibility as training
highly competent clinicians who will be able to provide a full range of
evidence-based, outcomes-informed professional psychological services
to a clinically diverse patient population.
We emphasize an individualized, personal and collaborative approach to
training that blends immersion in the clinical setting with appropriate
guidance and structure. Interns are viewed as integral members of a
highly competent, multi-disciplinary treatment team, and are included
in staff meetings and case discussions. We strongly encourage interns
to take an active role in program and curriculum development, and have
worked hard to cultivate an atmosphere in which interns' suggestions
and observations about our service delivery system are seriously
considered. Training must serve interns' professional development, not
only by fostering the development of clinical competencies basic to
professional psychology, but by instilling trainees with the skills and
attitudes expected of well qualified, humane and ethical professional
psychologists. We carefully consider interns' level of skill
development in designating clinical assignments, and tailor their
internship experiences to meet their clinical interests and further
their professional development.