Primary Internship Objectives
The internship is a time to develop advanced professional skills and begin to establish an integrated professional identity. The internship provides considerable autonomy and responsibility while offering constructive feedback and emotional support for personal and professional integration. Primary objectives include developing conceptual knowledge, applied skills, and competence in the following areas:
- Individual psychotherapy, with an emphasis on brief psychotherapy
- Group psychotherapy
- Multiculturalism
- Crisis intervention
- Clinical supervision
- Consultation
- Outreach programming
- Professional ethics and decision-making
- Professional functioning in an agency setting
Most responsibilities are structured into the internship, but interns are encouraged to exercise choices within these domains (e.g., types of groups, rotations, consultation project). We encourage a balance between exploring new areas of practice and further developing current areas of expertise.
Personal and Professional Integration
Personal and professional integration often involves examining personal characteristics and issues that are relevant to professional effectiveness and success. When doing so, the UCTC follows APA’s Ethical Standard 7.04 (Student Disclosure of Personal Information) as contained in the Revised Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (APA, 2002).
It is important that interns know that self-disclosure will be part of the supervisory and training experience during the doctoral psychology internship. Training staff will assist the intern to explore and understand the characteristics and dynamics the intern brings to interpersonal and professional situations. Staff will help interns explore how these characteristics and dynamics facilitate or hinder effective professional interactions and interventions. This exploration will also include identifying and processing intern cohort dynamics in order to assist interns in developing professional, collegial relationship skills.
Training Model
The University of Oregon Counseling and Testing Center subscribes to a practitioner-scholar model of training in which members of our training staff:
- Facilitate experiential and discussion based seminars
- Provide didactic presentations
- Assume mentorship and supervision roles
- Co-lead therapy groups with interns
- Oversee the general growth and development of the interns
- Co-facilitate/mentor interns in outreach facilitation and consultation
Monitoring the progress of training is an ongoing process. It includes evaluating each intern's progress on an ongoing, informal basis in supervision, as well as through written, formal evaluation two times a year. Staff regularly provide feedback both as a way to provide ample time for the intern to grow, but also to decrease worry around formal evaluation periods. In addition, feedback from interns regarding the relevance and effectiveness of the training experience is routinely solicited and included in a written evaluation twice each year.
Training Emphasis
Our primary goal is to prepare our interns for generalist positions in college and university counseling centers. Our generalist training program is focused on core competencies in the field for general practice and so we also prepare interns for practice in other clinical settings similar to our agency.
The training emphasis includes the integration of cultural and individual diversity and professional ethics and decision-making. Staff members have reaffirmed a strong commitment to supervise, teach, and mentor the interns. All professional staff members are considered part of the "training staff."