Clinical/Counseling Concentration
Faculty
The Clinical/Counseling program in Psychology is designed to prepare students interested in going into the helping professions and human services. Course work and related experiences should provide students with a foundation for graduate work, or, in some cases, entry level positions in counseling, school psychology, clinical psychology, child/adolescent assessment and intervention, occupational therapy, rehabilitation psychology, and other areas within the mental health field.
The Clinical/Counseling track helps students to develop an array of skills that are quite useful for a number of post-undergraduate pursuits. Feedback from former students has clearly indicated that transitioning into graduate school, research work, and entry level occupations has been quite easy. This is likely due to the interactive, hands on approach used in many of our classes. Our students learn how to work individually and in groups. They learn how to think critically and to make professional style presentations. They learn research and testing techniques not commonly offered in undergraduate institutions. Specifically within the Clinical/Counseling concentration, students can learn how to use biofeedback equipment and other psychophysiological instrumentation to see how physical measures are affected by psychological variables. Students also have opportunities to learn how to administer a variety of clinical measures in order to assist in diagnosis of psychopathological conditions.
Techniques range from clinical interviewing and paper-and-pencil testing to the use of computerized tests. Students are invited to take a full year of psychopathology which allows for very deep explorations regarding the etiology, symptoms, and treatments of a large variety of abnormal behaviors.
All students work closely with a clinical or counseling faculty member on a senior research project of interest to the student. By graduation, most students have worked on at least one additional project with a faculty member and played a role in presenting the findings at a regional psychology conference.
In its first year (1998-99), there were five psychology majors who graduated with clinical/counseling distinction. By the next academic year, 1999-00, that number had grown to eleven. As of right now, the clinical/counseling program is averaging 24 graduates per year, making it one of the largest specialized concentrations on campus. In the short period of time the Clinical/Counseling psychology program has been in existence, it has helped students get accepted into a number of graduate programs including those in the following human service specializations: clinical psychology, counseling psychology, social work, developmental psychology, occupational therapy, and physical therapy. In addition, several students have also gone on to both clinical research positions and careers in child care or teaching.