OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
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The OSU academic schedule begins classes the last week in September which allows interns the opportunity to spend the first four or five weeks becoming oriented toward the university, CAPS, and the training program. Many of our seminars begin early and offer specialized intensive training in selected areas during this orientation period.
The didactic component of our training program utilizes the science of psychology to inform current psychological practice. The goals of these seminars include providing interns with advanced didactic information, facilitating at times "difficult dialogues" and preparing interns for challenges that they may encounter in the future of the profession. Due to our developmental approach, we strive to tailor this seminar to the needs of the current intern class.
Throughout the year, interns participate in training seminars, or related activities, for an average of four hours per week. Many of the seminar topics require readings and most of the presenters provide resources and recommendations for further information.
This year-long, seminar addresses a wide range of professional issues intended to facilitate entry into the profession of psychology. Common areas addressed include specific clinical issues or special populations, theory, and treatment approaches including evidence-based treatments, job search strategies, and reviewing new developments in the field. Guest speakers may be invited to this seminar. The professional issues seminar includes modules in career development and outreach/prevention. Ethics and state laws are woven through the seminar and all aspects of training. Each intern facilitates a discussion of an ethical dilemma and chooses to present relevant professional literature in the fall, winter, or spring term.
Objectives include 1) being able to evaluate one’s career journey to date at the entry of internship along with significant milestones and their influence on career decision making, 2) being able to articulate the cultural differences between university counseling centers, private practice, faculty roles, and community mental health to effectively determine, formulate, and search post-internships, 3) being able to use technology and print media to effectively determine, formulate, and implement a job search post-internship and 4) managing self-care.
The primary goals of this seminar are to 1) inform seminar participants about the public health model and best practice development in mental health promotion; 2) collaborate with CAPS Assistant Director of Mental Health Promotion and external partners to design and facilitate a project that is in line with the mission and priorities of CAPS, and 3) reflect on lessons learned in the process and identify ways that CAPS can utilize the project after the intern's completion of the program. Seminar participants' projects will be guided by the public health model, health behavior theories, and the social-ecological model.
This seminar provides advanced-level discourse about issues of diversity. Interns are engaged in the exploration of a multicultural context for counseling. This is accomplished through personal reflection and assignments, readings, experiential exercises, group discussions, and the application of concepts to a case presentation. The seminar is built on a three-part training model for cultural competence that includes: awareness, knowledge, and skills. The first competence is the therapist's awareness of their own assumptions, values, and biases. The second competence is a working knowledge and understanding of a client's worldview. The third competence is the skill of intervening in a culturally relevant manner.
This seminar focuses on establishing a comfort level and proficiency in all aspects of facilitating groups including identifying what groups are needed at a counseling center, the referral and pre-screening process, co-leadership, multicultural sensitivity in groups, and dynamics involved in co-facilitating groups. The seminar provides didactic and experiential learning as well as supervision for groups that interns are co-leading.
Our interns are trained in supervision skills and participate in weekly supervision of supervision. The supervisory relationship between the practicum student and the intern will begin in the winter term and continue throughout the spring term. The intern will provide weekly supervision of the practicum student and review practicum therapy tapes. Practicum students are drawn from several regional programs and are selected through a competitive process. Their didactic training will largely occur in their home academic programs.
Interns have up to five (5) days per year allotted for professional development activities. These may be used for attending conferences or workshops outside of the office, going on job interviews, or attending dissertation defense or commencement. Interns are not required to be on-site or in the agency during these hours.
Interns can devote up to 80 hours of dissertation time per training year if indicated.
Interns will have one hour every other week for meeting informally as a group. This time can be used for getting to know one another on a deeper level, giving and receiving support, talking about the internship experience, doing some "reality testing" with one another, dealing with conflict, and developing a sense of cohesion as a group. Additionally, every other week interns meet with the Training Director as a way to "check-in" on the internship year to date.