Psychology 300C - Internship in Psychology

Psychology 300c - Internship in Psychology Winter 2008 Professor: Tim Kasser SMAC E-119, x7283, [email protected]

Goals: The primary purpose of this course is to work as part of the Clinical Psychology Term to provide students with an in-depth, immersion experience into what it is like to work in the helping professions of counseling, clinical psychology, and clinical social work. The internship serves this aim in several ways. First, it provides students with “real-life” examples of the types of information they are also encountering in Clinical & Abnormal Psychology and in Theories & Methods of Psychotherapy. Second, it gives students the opportunity to apply the knowledge and skills they are developing in these two courses. Third, it provides students with additional clinically-relevant knowledge and skills, including issues of ethics, diversity, termination, and working within institutions. Finally, it provides an opportunity for students to give back to the Galesburg community by helping individuals in need.

Text: Baird, B.N. (2008). The internship, practicum, and field placement handbook: A guide for the helping professions (5th Edition).

Meeting times: In class meeting: Tuesdays, 9 – 10:30 a.m. 30-60 minutes on-site supervision per week: To be arranged with site 4 or 7 hours per week at internship site (depending on credit taken): To be arranged

Grades: This class is graded on a Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory basis. In order to receive an S, a student must receive a satisfactory grade on all of the following assignments. An unsatisfactory grade on any of the following assignments will result in the student receiving a U for the class.

1) Signature on contract. As part of this class, students, on-site supervisors, and the instructor will each sign 3 copies of a contract stating their respective responsibilities for this course. One copy will be retained by each of the signatories.

2) Planning document - This paper, due the first week of class, is designed to help students concretely and explicitly state their expectations for their internship. Specifically, students will state at least five goals they have for their internship. These might include the development of certain personal qualities or the acquisition of particular knowledge or skills. Students are strongly encouraged to state these goals as concretely as possible, as that will help them in formulating the next two parts of the assignment. Second, students will explain the plans they have for reaching these goals during the course of the ten weeks. That is, what types of activities, experiences, reading, etc., will need to occur in order to reach these goals? Third, students will explain specifically how they plan to evaluate their progress on their five goals at the end of the term. That is, how will success at the goal be demonstrated? This document will be shared with supervisors at the internship site to help them better understand each individual student’s goals. It will also be referred to again for the final written assignment. This document is due January 8, i.e., the first day of class.

3) Weekly journals - Every time students go to their internship site, they will complete an “objective journal” entry (~300 -1000 words) that summarizes what happened during that particular visit. This might include a record of the clients interacted with, the types of activities engaged in, etc. The goal is to provide an accurate, clear, and objective record of what happened that day. Students must be sure to respect client confidentiality and to complete these notes on the same day that they went to the site; part of being a professional is keeping up-to-date notes. Students should submit an objective journal each week. In addition, for 4 of the 10 weeks (for full credit students) or 2 of the 10 weeks (for 1/2 credit students) students will complete a “reflective journal” (~500-1000 words) in which they reflect on a particular client’s situation or on their own personal experience of working in this professional role. The goal of these reflective journals is to help students think at a deeper, more introspective level about issues such as the personal experience of being in a helping role, feelings that are arising from interacting with particular clients, what it must be like to be a client, why a particular individual has the problems s/he does, why the institution does things the way it does, etc. Both types of journals should be submitted electronically on Mondays by 9 a.m. in the class drop box. The objective journal documents should be named “lastname_obj#.doc” and the reflective journal documents should be named “lastname_refl#.doc.”

4) Summaries of literature. Students are required to read one (for 1/2 credit students) or two (for full credit students) professional (not popular) articles, chapters, books, etc., that concern some aspect of the types of therapy, institution, or populations served by their individual internship site. After reading the piece, students must complete an ~ 200- word summary of the piece and then an ~ 300-word reflection on how it relates to some aspect of their internship experience. Students may turn in only one summary per week (due Monday by 9 a.m.) and all summaries must be turned in by February 18th. The literature summary documents should be named “lastname_summ#.doc.”

5) Promptness and attendance at site and in class. Part of being a professional is to be on time and to reliably fulfill one’s obligations. Thus, students are expected to attend all Tuesday morning classes and to report to on-site activities on time and when scheduled. Students will be required to have someone on site acknowledge that they came for the specified number of hours each day scheduled. Of course, illnesses and emergencies do arise; if this occurs, students are expected to call the internship site (and the instructor) as soon as possible to inform them of the problem. As soon as possible afterwards, students will need to make arrangements to make up the lost hours.

6) Satisfactory evaluation by on-site supervisor at completion of term. At the end of the term, each student’s on-site supervisor will be contacted and asked whether or not the student’s participation and work on site was satisfactory or unsatisfactory. Much of this evaluation will be based on Appendix D from the text. 7) Final reflection on internship experience. At the end of the term, students will return to their initial planning document and revisit the five goals they formulated at the beginning of the term. First, students will evaluate their progress on the goals, using the criteria stated at the beginning of the term. Second, students will reflect on what hindered and helped progress at each goal. Third, students will write about the two most important other things they learned (not related to their initial goals) from participating in Clinical term and/or this internship class. This paper is due during the class’s scheduled final exam period. It should be named “lastname_finrefl.doc.”

Class Schedule

This is one of those classes in which almost everything should be covered early in the term, i.e., it would be great to know about ethics, assault, clinical writing, etc., immediately. Of course this is not possible, but students are encouraged to read ahead in their text if they are concerned about particular issues. Most class periods will devote the first half of our time to discussion of issues related to the assigned reading; the second half of class will provide students with the opportunity to talk about what they are learning at the site, discuss problems they are having, etc.

Date Topic Chapters to read

Jan. 8 Getting Started Chs. 1 & 2 Jan. 15 Ethics Ch. 3 Jan. 22 Supervision & Safety Chs. 4 & 8 Jan. 26 Self-Defense Class 2:00 - 3:30 p.m. Jan. 29 Clinical Writing Ch. 6 Feb. 5 Stress & Self-Care Ch. 7 Feb. 12 Open None Feb. 19 Diversity Ch. 5 Kei Kawashima Feb. 26 Open None March 4 Termination Ch. 9 March 4 Being a Clinician 7:00 – 8:00 p.m. Paula Ochs March 11 Final reflections Chs. 10 & 11 Note on late assignments. Assignments are due on the assigned date at the beginning of class, unless otherwise noted. Only excused absences from the Dean are valid excuses for late papers.

Note on papers: College-level writing is expected on all papers. That is, incomplete sentences, sloppy editing, poor grammar, frequent typographical errors and the like are unacceptable and will result in an unsatisfactory mark. APA format should be used when relevant.

Note on class preparation: Please make sure to have completed the assigned readings by the day of class. I will refer to these materials as if you have read them.

Note on plagiarism. Please be sure all sentences are in your own words or fully paraphrased or quoted if you are using someone else’s ideas. If three or more words are in the same order as in the original text they must be in quotation marks and cited. Failure to put quotes in quotation marks (even if the source is cited) is a violation of the honor code. The following examples show what is and is not acceptable.

Original Sentence: In brief, gender differences are modest in magnitude, consistent with gender stereotypes, and replicable across cultures.

Plagiarized Sentence: Gender differences are consistent with gender stereotypes, replicable across cultures, and modest in magnitude.

Plagiarized Sentence: Gender differences are moderate in magnitude, compatible with gender stereotypes, and consistent across cultures.

Acceptable Sentence: We found that differences between genders were not very large, but did fit common stereotypes and were similar across the 26 cultures.

Note on writing quality. Please visit my website at: http://faculty.knox.edu/tkasser/teaching.html#coursepolicies

Any paper with five or more instances of these 10 writing mistakes will be considered unsatisfactory and returned to you for corrections.