Internship in Professional Psychology Overview, Counseling Services Website

Internship in Professional Psychology Overview

The University and Its Environment

Located on two spacious, attractive campuses, the University at Buffalo is the largest, most comprehensive member of the State University of New York system. It boasts an ethnically and culturally rich and diverse student body of approximately 27,000 students, 19 percent of whom are minority students and 7 percent of whom are international students. The distinguished faculty includes nationally and internationally recognized figures in all major disciplines. In addition, the presence of three major coordinating divisions, Undergraduate Education, Graduate and Professional Education, and the Division of Continuing Education, allows for a variety and scope of academic programs that is unsurpassed. The quality and extensiveness of the facilities at both on- and off-campus sites greatly enhance the reputation of the University. As the second largest city in New York State, Buffalo is proud to be the home of this prestigious institution. Indeed, the University represents a major cultural center for all of Western New York. Films, concerts, art exhibits, and lectures by a wide variety of prominent people are available on campus throughout the year.

The City of Buffalo is also rich with culture and heritage. The "City of Good Neighbors" boasts many vibrant multicultural communities brimming with tradition, history and events. Buffalo has high profile and active African-American, Hispanic, Native American, Middle Eastern, Polish, Irish, and Asian communities that both celebrate and share their history as well as create new traditions. These are just a small sample of the diverse cultural communities locally. Buffalo is a wealth of multicultural history and important cultural legacies.

The Counseling Services: An Overview

Counseling Services is a department of Student Affairs. Our office provides a full range of services and programs which promotes the personal development and psychological well-being of students and the attainment of personal and educational goals. The staff is strongly committed to programming related to student diversity and to an overall university environment where individual and cultural differences are celebrated. Among the services offered are group therapy, individual psychotherapy, couples counseling, crisis intervention, consultation, outreach programming, career counseling, substance abuse assessment, psychological evaluation, and referral. Counseling Services works with students presenting with a full spectrum of concerns, from developmental issues to severe psychopathology.

Counseling Services has a staff of eight licensed or license-eligible psychologists, four licensed social workers, two board certified consulting psychiatrists, and psychiatric residents. In addition to the, three full-time pre-doctoral psychology interns, we also have several part-time trainees, including several social work interns, graduate assistants, and beginning and advanced practicum students from the University at Buffalo Counseling, School, and Educational Psychology graduate programs (APA-accredited, APA Office of Program Consultation and Accreditation, 750 First St. NE Washington, DC 20002-4242) and Niagara University's Master program in Mental Health Counseling. Staff members hold adjunct appointments in the Counseling, School, and Educational Psychology department, or the Social Work department.

Setting and Facilities

Counseling Services offices are located on the North (Amherst) Campus of the State University of New York at Buffalo in a residence hall complex. The facilities include individual offices for interns, a group room for counseling and seminars, and video/audio recording and networked computer equipment in each intern's office. Additional space is located at the Student Health Center, where staff also see clients throughout the week.

Counseling Services has a strong commitment to maintaining close working relationships with other departments of Student Affairs, including Student Health Services, Wellness Education Services, Accessibility Resources, Career Planning and Placement and the Office of Residence Life, and throughout the University, such as the Educational Opportunity Program, the Athletics Department, and the Office of International Student Services, to name a few.

Internship Training Philosophy

The full-time internship offered by the Counseling Services at the State University of New York at Buffalo is fully accredited by the American Psychological Association (APA Office of Program Consultation and Accreditation, 750 First St. NE Washington, DC 20002-4242, 202-336-5979, http://www.apa.org/ed/accreditation/homepage.html External Site Link Icon ).

The internship offered by the University at Buffalo Counseling Services (UBCS) is designed to provide a broad-based professional training experience in the range of activities carried out by psychologists in a service-oriented university counseling center. Our philosophy of training incorporates a generalist, practitioner-scholar perspective, highlighting mentorship and experiential learning, all with an eye toward providing developmentally appropriate and individualized experiences for our interns. We also recognize the profound impact of individual and cultural difference in all that we do as psychologists and as human beings. Hence, we have a commitment to diversity and multicultural awareness in all aspects of our training program.

Generalist Perspective

Our mission is to train interns as skilled generalists equipped to work in a variety of post-internship employment settings. To this end, we provide a range of didactic and experiential training activities that psychologists in a large university counseling center setting or other mental health settings are likely to encounter. The areas of functioning within the substantive areas of counseling psychology emphasized at our center include: individual and group psychotherapy, clinical assessment, crisis intervention, outreach, and consultation.

Practitioner-Scholar

Our staff recognizes the importance of clinical practice that is informed by scholarly inquiry, and espouses a practitioner-scholar model in our professional work, including training and service delivery. Theoretical and research literature is integrated with experiential components of training through provision and discussion of professional literature in seminars and supervision. There is recognition of the applicability of scientific method in clinical thinking, including critical evaluation, awareness of biases, integration of available information toward hypothesis formation (i.e. case conceptualization), and the process of hypothesis testing (e.g. implementing interventions, assessing their impact, revising hypotheses). UBCS staff serves as practitioner-scholar role models for our trainees, and center activities illustrate the integration of science and practice. Administrative and policy decisions at our center are informed by scholarly review of both empirical and theoretical literature, as well as our center's ongoing examination of service utilization, client demographics, and client satisfaction. Results of ongoing satisfaction surveys may also inform areas in need of attention for clinical staff and trainees.

Mentorship and Experiential Learning

As part of the foundation of our training philosophy, mentorship is evidenced by a genuine commitment to intensive supervision and to the furthering of the intern's personal and professional growth. Interns are respectfully regarded as developing professionals and are encouraged to work closely with UBCS staff members, who provide mentoring and serve as professional role models for our trainees. Overall, we seek to create an atmosphere of respect and trust where interns and professional staff support their own and others' growth both personally and professionally. Staff members model ethical and professional clinical approaches and they participate in teaching through supervision, consultation, and seminars devoted to the professional development of interns. Staff members utilize a variety of theoretical orientations in our clinical work, including cognitive, behavioral, feminist, systems, existential, psychodynamic, and solution-focused. Regardless of the primary orientations with which each staff member identifies, there is a shared understanding and attention to the therapeutic relationship as a key component and contributor to therapy process and progress. Therefore, interns have the opportunity to get exposure to a variety of therapeutic approaches and styles, while still refining their ability to attend to relational dynamics and use the therapeutic relationship as a primary tool or change mechanism

Developmental Approach

There is attention to developmentally appropriate training experiences for optimal growth. Interns' experiences are sequential, cumulative, and graded, with increasing levels of responsibility and expectations for independent functioning throughout the internship year, to facilitate continued growth from a "trainee" identity toward a "professional" identity. Toward this end, the internship year begins with a period of orientation during which interns receive several seminars providing didactic information on the core tasks that interns will engage in throughout the year (e.g. short-term therapy, clinical interview, outreach/consultation, group therapy, crisis intervention, supervision). Interns also shadow training staff as they conduct initial clinical assessment interviews and crisis intervention sessions before interns are expected to engage in these activities themselves. Previous training and experience is assessed, initial goals for training are agreed upon, and these training goals are revised throughout the year based on periodic intern evaluations. Throughout the internship year, support, training, and supervision activities are geared toward assisting interns to increase their clinical sophistication, knowledge, and skill, be able to take on more responsibility, and develop greater confidence and capacity for autonomous functioning.

Individualized Training:

We recognize that each intern brings a variety of skills, experiences, and training needs to the internship, and that some flexibility to tailor the training program according to the strengths, needs, and interests of each intern is necessary for optimal growth. This is accomplished in numerous ways, including customizing training contracts for each intern based on their particular interests and needs, and providing opportunities for intern input into the planning of various center and training activities.

Diversity and Multicultural Awareness

University at Buffalo Counseling Services staff and trainees represent a diverse array of racial identities, cultural identities and sexual orientations. The staff and trainees at Counseling Services are deeply committed to honoring diversity among staff by creating a welcoming and safe environment that respects difference. Counseling Services staff encourage expression and sharing of identity through various outlets including monthly "Multicultural Moments" where staff and trainees share various aspects of their identities during staff meetings. UB Counseling Services also houses a Diversity Committee which addresses outreach and service delivery to various cultural communities on campus.

Counseling Services staff model authenticity, openness, and pride in their respective identities. They share freely about themselves and their lives while being curious about each other's background and identities, and how these impact their personal and professional selves.

Our internship program attends to diversity/multicultural issues throughout various training activities, including didactic training, supervision, and actual clinical experiences with a diverse client population. The staff of Counseling Services is committed to the awareness and affirmation of diversity in all our clinical and non-clinical endeavors. Multicultural awareness and sensitivity pervade all training and service at our center. The student population here at UB is quite diverse not only among traditionally under-represented American groups, but also among international students. Interns are provided with exposure to clients of differing ethnicities, cultures, sexual orientations, socioeconomic backgrounds, religious backgrounds, ages, genders, and abilities. Several seminars are presented throughout the year addressing various topics related to diversity and multicultural issues. Workshops are provided to the university community in an effort to assist in the celebration of diversity throughout the campus. We strive to recruit interns who share our commitment to embracing the challenges and rewards of gearing services to such a broad-ranging population.

We see the internship year as a transition period when interns will be shifting from a trainee identity and developing their clinical and professional identities. We seek to assist in this developmental process by providing interns opportunities to stretch, take risks, try out different forms of interventions and therapy approaches, and begin to discover their own individual styles and approaches that are consistent with their sense of self, values, strengths, and interests, with greater sensitivity and respect for the multicultural world in which we exist.