Philosophy and Goals

The Counseling Psychology program adheres to a “scientist-practitioner” model of training originally derived from the philosophical tenets outlined at the 1949 Boulder Conference on Graduate Training in Clinical Psychology (Baker & Benjamin, 2000) and most recently articulated at the National Conference on Scientist-Practitioner Education and Training for the Professional Practice of Psychology (Gainesville, 1990; Belar & Perry, 1992). This model represents a long-standing integrative approach that combines science and practice. That is, students are trained to value ways in which practice and research inform one another as scholars, teachers and practitioners. As a result, our students are taught how to think scientifically about human behavior, deliver empirically-supported and theoretically sound psychological services to clients and contribute to the field through research, scholarship and teaching.

We have a generalist training model with an emphasis on health service psychology that is designed to lead students through a graduated sequence of learning tasks. Our courses and practicum opportunities are grounded in basic psychological science and offer the breadth of training that prepares students to work as health service counseling psychologists in a variety of settings such as university counseling centers, medical centers, prisons, higher education and private practice. Moreover, our curriculum is grounded in the foundational and functional competencies developed by the Assessment of Competency Benchmarks Work Group (Fouad et al., 2007):

The basic philosophical tenets and core values of our training program are as follows:

Aim of the program: Our program has one aim: To prepare students to be effective scientist- practitioners in the field of health service psychology.

From these program philosophies and aim of the program the following associated competencies are derived:

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