A Scholar-Practitioner Program
The Los Angeles clinical PhD training program is based on a scholar-practitioner model in which practice and scholarship receive equal emphasis. The PhD program has full accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation of the American Psychological Association (750 First Street NE, Washington, DC 20002-4242; Phone: 202-336-5979; Email: apaaccred@apa.org).
The program is based on the principle that clinical psychologists have a responsibility to work to ameliorate psychological suffering and facilitate psychological well-being through both basic and applied research and interventions that evolve from scholarly work relevant to societal needs. An underlying philosophical assumption of the program is that there is a need for innovative scholarship that provides a foundation for the development of interventions to meet the needs of diverse and underserved populations. The program is also based on the philosophy that graduates will assume diverse roles over the course of a career lifetime. Therefore, students are exposed to a variety of role models and skill sets, including clinical practice, research, teaching, supervision, professional advocacy, and consultation.
The following guiding principles emerge from this philosophy:
1. The generation and application of knowledge must occur with an awareness of the sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts of mental health and mental illness.
2. Scholarship and practice must not only build upon existing literature, but must also maintain their relevance to the diverse elements in our society and assume the challenges of attending to the complex social issues associated with psychological functioning.
3. Methods of research and intervention must be appropriate to the culture in which they are conducted.
The scholar-practitioner model is an integrative one that builds upon the conviction that scholarship and practice must occur concurrently. Consistent with its guiding philosophy, the program seeks to inculcate in all its students awareness that the discipline of psychology best serves the needs of individuals, families, and communities when research and intervention continuously inform each other.
Students receive advanced training in theoretical issues, techniques of psychological interventions, professional issues, consultation, teaching, and ethics and supervision. In addition, they receive advanced training in research applications and complete a dissertation by the end of their fifth year. PhD students are strongly encouraged to pursue a fifth-year, full-time APA-accredited internship. For those whose personal circumstances make this impossible, a two-year, half-time internship training model in the fourth and fifth years will be acceptable. Forty-five hours of individual psychotherapy with a psychologist licensed in the state of California are required prior to graduation. (Forty-five hours of therapy received in the last three years prior to matriculation may satisfy this requirement.)
The program offers three emphasis areas: Clinical Health Psychology (CH), Family and Couple Clinical Psychology Emphasis (FACE) and Multicultural Community-Clinical Psychology (MCCP), as well as a Multi-Interest option in which affiliation with a specific emphasis area is not required. Both emphasis affiliated and non-emphasis affiliated students must complete 150 units.
Goals and Learning Outcomes
The program’s primary goal is to train clinical psychologists who will:
1. Possess a solid foundation in research methodology and statistics that prepares them to design, conduct and disseminate both basic and applied research, with particular attention to research in community and service delivery settings.
2. Manifest a scholarly attitude that emphasizes critical inquiry; an integrated “scholar-practitioner” identity; and an awareness of the necessary continuity between research and scholarship, practice, and intervention, in all of their professional activities.
3. Seek and/or create opportunities to engage in research and evaluation as a part of their professional activities.
4. Be competent practitioners with skills in diagnosis, assessment, and therapeutic interventions.
5. Reflect the consideration of relevant social and cultural contexts in their research and intervention activities.
The program is committed to providing curriculum, professional socialization, and field training experiences that implement each of these goals and develop the full competencies expected of our graduates. Students must pass written and oral comprehensive examinations as partial fulfillment of the requirements for admission to doctoral candidacy. They are also evaluated at other regular points in their matriculation, including an assessment of professional competencies prior to graduation.
Professional Training
The development of appropriate professional knowledge, skills, and attitudes is a process that begins with the student’s doctoral program and continues through the individual’s professional career via practice, consultation with colleagues and formal continuing education. At the predoctoral stage, students’ professional development occurs within the context of both formal coursework and clinical training experiences supervised by faculty and professionals in the field. Students develop and acquire clinical skills through professional training experiences in a variety of mental health service settings in the community. Such supervised professional training experiences are called clerkship and practicum at the premaster’s level and internship at the predoctoral level.
Each student is assigned a professional field training advisor who meets regularly with the student to develop and implement an individualized training plan designed to assure (1) that the student receives a broad base of clinical experiences with a variety of clientele and professional role models and (2) that professional training experiences are well-matched to the student’s level of skill and longer-term professional goals.
In the second year of the PhD program, students may take an optional clerkship. The emphasis is on assessment via interviewing and testing. Clerkships include experience at a field site.
PhD students in the third year are required to have a minimum 15-hour per week practicum experience in a mental health setting. Students begin to assume clinical responsibility for assessment and intervention while closely supervised at a level appropriate to the student’s training and abilities. This clinical professional training experience varies with respect to the nature of clients served and the mental health setting in which the student serves, as well as with individual students’ skill levels, professional interests, and training needs. The total number of minimum required practicum hours is 750.
PhD students choose to either complete a half-time internship in the fourth year and a full-time internship in the fifth year after coursework has been completed or to complete a half-time internship in the fourth and fifth years. The total number of minimum required internship hours is 2000.
Students should be aware that various postdoctoral training positions and some employers (e.g., the Veterans Administration) require that successful applicants have APA-accredited internships. Students have extensive opportunities to discuss with the director and their assigned academic and clinical field training advisors the various internship sites available and the development of a training plan which assures students’ training needs and goals are met.
The predoctoral internship involves a systematic and intensive program that includes assessment, intervention, supervision, and training in agencies that are under the auspices of clinical faculty and administrative staff of the Division of Professional Field Training and the Director of Field Training at the Los Angeles campus. During the internship, the student has responsibility for providing a variety of psychological services under the direct supervision of licensed clinical psychologists and in contexts that offer a variety of additional training opportunities, for example, case conferences, in-service training, quality assurance reviews, and individual and group supervision.
At both the practicum and half-time internship levels, Los Angeles campus students are placed for professional training in agencies that are formally affiliated with the school and meet all CAPIC requirements for internship training. All professional training programs are in addition carefully reviewed and continually monitored by the Los Angeles campus clinical faculty to assure consistent and high quality training. The Los Angeles campus clinical faculty members are also responsible for grading students’ training performance. The types of settings in which students might train include university and college counseling centers; inpatient psychiatric hospitals; public and private community mental health agencies; medical hospitals or outpatient clinics; physical rehabilitation programs; day treatment programs; substance abuse programs; and residential treatment centers. With over 100 agencies in its training network, the Los Angeles campus offers students exceptional professional training opportunities reflecting the wide range of interests and training needs of the students, as well as exposure to working with highly diverse populations.
The majority of affiliated professional training sites exist within a 40-mile radius of the campus. Students can generally anticipate driving some distance in at least one of their professional training years. Students who wish to pursue full-time internships are encouraged to make applications throughout the country. Currently, some students receive a stipend from their local professional training agency. The majority of half-time internships and virtually all clerkships and practica do not offer stipends, and students should not count on training stipends as a means of financing their education.
The predoctoral training requirements in the clinical programs at Los Angeles sufficiently qualify a graduate of the clinical programs to pursue licensure in the State of California after acquiring an additional 1500 hours of post-doctoral experience. Students who may be considering licensure in other states should check the requirements for licensure in those states carefully; considerable variation exists among states in regard to necessary qualifications. State licensing requirements can be obtained from: Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards, 555 South Perry Street, Suite 112, PO Box 4389, Montgomery, Alabama 36103.
Multicultural Competence Training
Clinical programs at Los Angeles have developed multicultural training to embrace consideration of diversity regarding issues of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age, social class, and religion. This is reflected in the required course for all clinical students (Intercultural Processes and Human Diversity), as well as through the integration of multicultural perspectives in all courses.
Special features of this program include a national reputation for excellence in multiculturally relevant education and training, the wealth of diverse clinical placements available in the Los Angeles region, a mentoring model firmly integrated with the academic experience and established network of high-quality, cutting-edge, applied research training opportunities.
The diversity of the campus community provides students with the opportunity to interact with faculty, staff, administrators, and other students from many different cultural backgrounds. The year-long Intercultural Processes and Human Diversity course focuses on increasing multicultural awareness. Increasing self-awareness relevant to multicultural issues, increasing awareness of multicultural dynamics in larger society, and examining their implications for psychotherapy are the primary goals of the course. Students are asked to look at their own multicultural identities, as well as at their values, stereotypes, prejudices, and potential “blind spots.”
In addition, Intercultural Processes and Human Diversity focus on increasing multicultural knowledge by gaining familiarity with theory, research, and clinical applications relevant to diverse populations. Finally, elective courses and the availability of field training sites that provide experience with diverse groups offer opportunities to develop skills that enhance work with culturally diverse clients.
Research Training
During the course of their graduate training, the students gain proficiency in applied research methods. The PhD program emphasizes training psychologists to be producers of scientific research and PhD students begin their research training right from the beginning of the program.
In addition to formal coursework, which provides a basic understanding of research methodology and statistics, within the first two and a half years, PhD students complete three semesters of research practicum which emphasizes the planning and conduct of research designs. In the third year, students enroll in Research in Applied Settings and focus on the development of research and consultation skills investigating problems in practical situations.
Fourth year students enter into formal dissertation work with a faculty mentor to produce a scholarly and methodologically sound dissertation proposal that is to be completed by the end of the fifth year. The mentor becomes the student’s dissertation chair when preliminary orals have been successfully completed.
Students must pass preliminary orals by the end of their fourth year.
The PhD program faculty oversees the dissertation process and approves dissertation proposals and final oral performance. The program director is responsible for advising students who have difficulties in finding an appropriate dissertation topic or dissertation chair.
Credit for Previous Graduate Work
Students may submit requests for transfer credit for previous graduate work. The maximum allowed for transfer credit is 30 semester units of graduate level courses. Transfer credit is allowed only for master’s level courses.
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