As an intern at CAPS, you will participate in a variety of training experiences designed to refine the skills and knowledge you bring from your doctoral program.
Multicultural Seminar
This seminar occurs bi-weekly and is designed to increase awareness of, sensitivity to, and intentionality regarding the impact of diversity in daily lives. As an intern in our training program, we expect you to engage in self-reflection while learning to incorporate a widening array of considerations for therapeutic situations. These meetings include discussion of your worldview and your experience working with clients who have cultural and individual characteristics that differ from you. By the end of your year at CAPS, we expect you to be able to describe the lens through which you view the world and how this lens impacts your professional identity and practice.
Professional Issues Group Supervision
Professional Issues is a group supervision weekly experience designed to provide a forum for you to reflect on your individual and collective internship experiences. As an intern at Pacific CAPS, we ask you to share in identifying, exploring, and processing salient professional issues that arise in the field of psychology. We also use this time to expand your ability to engage in program evaluation, conduct supervision, develop a self-care plan to aid in work/life balance, and establish a strong professional identity as a health service psychologist. The overall objective of this experience is to develop reflective skills and multiple ways of knowing in legal, ethical, and other professional practice issues, to solidify the development of your professional identity, and to provide a space where you can engage in difficult conversations and provide peer consultation with each other. Once a month this time is set aside for you to meet as a cohort without the presence of a supervisor or the Training Director and will collectively determine the focus for discussion which emerges from your professional experiences.
Group Therapy Seminar
This experiential and didactic seminar focuses on the stages of group therapy from the perspective of you as the facilitator. We cover empirically-based approaches, techniques, interventions for group psychotherapy and the ethics and limits of confidentiality that exist in a group setting. In addition to this seminar, Group Case Consultation takes place monthly and includes video review video of our therapy groups in order to provide supervision of all groups that are being facilitated with a focus on the ways in which group therapy process occurs in a college setting.
Outreach Seminar
We believe that it is important to train interns to become competent, skilled presenters and liaisons to the campus community. The experiential component of Outreach Seminar is significant as you will learn (or refine) skills in using audiovisual/multimedia in engaging and effective ways. In this seminar we go over the basics of effective presenting (verbal, vocal, and visual communication) and refine these skills through the use of video recording your outreach rehearsals in order to review and polish your skillset. Additionally, you will learn to coordinate, market, and implement outreach presentations through collaboration with campus partners and one another.
Assessment Seminar
This seminar focuses on evidence-based clinical interviews and assessment methods available at CAPS for diagnosis of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) as well as campus referrals of Substance Assessments. Assessment will be explored from a historical perspective along with culturally sensitive test administration, interpretation, report writing, and oral feedback. This seminar encourages a willingness to explore personal and professional identity development and presence in the room throughout the assessment process.
Empirically-Based Intervention Seminar
This seminar runs throughout the training year, with a focus on therapeutic modalities and therapeutic support specifically for the college student population. Doctoral interns are given opportunities to tailor didactic and discussion-based components to meet their internship goals and are asked to contribute to the learning of their colleagues by leading the seminar one time each in the Spring semester. Doctoral interns are supported in their efforts to gain awareness and understanding of their unique therapeutic styles and approaches, and work on forming a true professional identity within this internship experience. This seminar requires regular reading and discussion of pertinent articles, openness to feedback, and a willingness to explore your own identity development and intersections of identity, as well as the ability to integrate this into the Major Case Presentation culminating project.
Information about the Use of Distance Education Technologies for Training and Supervision
We utilize online and electronic education methods during various training aspects at CAPS. There are no fees (for interns) associated with these trainings. Typically the training is either a shared experience, occurring in our conference room, or the necessary training is available to access through either a URL or to download from our department electronic drive. Electronic education methods include training webinars, TED Talk videos, relevant podcasts, video recorded rehearsals of outreach presentations, clinical staff connecting electronically from other campuses for important meetings, and review of video recorded therapy sessions as an aspect of supervision.
