Clinical Psychology: PhD, Los Angeles

A Scholar-Practitioner Program

The Los Angeles Clinical Psychology PhD training program, a scholar-practitioner model program, gives equal emphasis to practice and scholarship and is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of the American Psychological Association (Office of Program Consultation and Accreditation, American Psychological Association, 750 First Street NE, Washington, DC 20002; Phone: 202-336-5979; Email: apaaccred@apa.org; Web: www.apa.org/ed/accreditation).

Faculty endorse the principle that clinical psychologists have a responsibility to work to ameliorate psychological suffering and facilitate psychological well-being through interventions and basic and applied research. We emphasize scholarly work relevant to societal needs. We recognize the need for innovative scholarship that helps clinicians develop interventions to meet the needs of diverse and underserved populations. Our program builds on the recognition 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 those related to clinical practice, research, teaching, supervision, and consultation. Students may also take elective courses in advocacy, grant writing, and teaching, subject to sufficient enrollment.

The following guiding principles emerge from our philosophy:

1. 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 builds upon the conviction that scholarship and practice enhance one another and should lead to reflective practice – in which the practitioner draws on clinical experience to enhance scholarly understanding and draws on multiple forms of scholarship in order to understand clinical case material. 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, and ethics and supervision. In addition, they receive advanced training in research applications and complete a dissertation. PhD students may either pursue a fifth-year, full-time internship or a two-year, half-time internship in the fourth and fifth years. APA-accredited, APPIC, and CAPIC internships are acceptable ways to meet the internship requirement. Forty-five hours of documented individual psychotherapy with a psychologist licensed in the state of California are required. For students with prior psychotherapy, this requirement may be satisfied by 45 hours of documented therapy conducted by a licensed psychologist within three years of matriculation.

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 (MIO) in which affiliation with a specific emphasis area is not required. All students must complete 150 units.

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.

Program Goals and Learning Outcomes

The program’s primary goal is to train clinical psychologists who will meet the following criteria:

1. They possess a solid foundation in research methodology and statistics that enable them to design, conduct and disseminate both basic and applied research, with particular attention to research in community and service delivery settings.

2. They 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, throughout their professional activities.

3. They engage in research dissemination or basic or applied research or program evaluation as a part of their professional activities.

4. They possess a solid foundation of research, theory, and practical knowledge enabling them to engage in diagnosis, assessment, and therapeutic interventions to assist clients with cognitive, emotional, and behavioral difficulties.

5. They consider 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 support each of these goals and develop the 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 include practica and internships, as well as an optional clerkship in the second year.

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 chosen with due consideration of 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, subject to site availability. 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 either to complete a second practicum in the fourth year and a full-time internship in the fifth year after coursework has been completed or to complete a CAPIC half-time internship in the fourth and fifth years.

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 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 Program Director routinely meets with students to ensure that they understand the internship training process and what they need to do to enhance the competitiveness of their applications.

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, such as case conferences, in-service training, quality assurance reviews, and individual and group supervision.

At the practicum level, students are placed for professional training in agencies that are formally affiliated with the school. At the internship level, students apply competitively for internships participating either in the APA/APPIC or CAPIC match process. All clerkship and practicum training programs are carefully reviewed and monitored on an ongoing basis to assure consistent and high quality training. The Los Angeles campus clinical faculty members are also responsible for monitoring students’ training performance in conjunction with their academic and research progress, through an individual advisorial relationship (each graduate student is paired with a faculty advisor). 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 clerkship and practicum 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 PhD program at Los Angeles are sufficient to qualify a graduate to pursue licensure in the State of California after acquiring additional supervised professional experience, as specified in California Board of Psychology regulations. The State of California has specific requirements for coursework in human sexuality, child abuse, substance abuse, spousal abuse, and aging and long-term care. Students are responsible for ensuring that they take electives or supplemental continuing education courses sufficient to enable them to get licensed in California or any other state where they intend to become licensed. Alliant students are able to take courses through Alliant’s own continuing education unit to meet California licensure requirements in the specific topics listed above. Since these requirements change from time to time, students are advised to regularly check the California Board of Psychology website (or the website of any other Board they intend to pursue licensure) when making course selections. 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, 170 Greencastle Road, Tyrone, GA 30290 (Phone: 678-216-1175); www.asppb.org.

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.

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.” A willingness to self-evaluate and self-disclose are essential to this course.

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 start 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 and culminates in a poster presentation of an original piece of empirical research. 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 committee 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 committee chair.

Credit for Previous Graduate Work

Students may submit requests for transfer credit for graduate work completed prior to admission to the program. The maximum allowed for transfer credit is 30 semester units of graduate level courses. Transfer credit is allowed only for master’s level courses and is subject to faculty review for appropriateness of content and level to the current training program.