Psychology 540: Internship Seminar

   CARN 107      TTH     11:00AM -12:15 

     J. Alexander Dale
 

Office Carnegie #09 (Phone 332 2392, -email adale).
Office Hours-MTWF 10-11 & Th 4-5 others available by appointment -please call or email
above

                             Life Meets Academia!

Overview (Written by Joshua Searle-White, Ph.D.)

     Welcome to the Internship Seminar!  This course has several purposes.  First, it will
provide you with some background to help you make your internship experience as interesting
and educational as possible.  Second, through class discussions, a presentation, and a paper, it
will help you integrate your internship experience with your academic work.  Third, in the
class sessions you will have the opportunity to work through any problems or questions that
may arise in the course of your internship.  And finally, by engaging in conversations with
your colleagues who are at other internship sites, you will gain exposure to a number of
different kinds of applied work.

     You will find this course an interesting and useful adjunct to your internship
experience.  Let’s work together to make it so!(AD)

Relationship of Internship Seminar to the Internship

      You are the intern (that much you probably already know).  At your internship site, you
will have a site supervisor who will organize and direct your day-to-day on-site experience.
He or she is most directly responsible for your work, and you should pay careful attention to
his or her instructions and feedback.  The faculty liaison for your internship has the
responsibility of maintaining contact with your internship site, meeting with you periodically
through the semester, reading your journal, and giving you a grade at the end of the semester,
in consultation with your site supervisor.  You should meet with your faculty liaison as soon
as possible to learn about any particular requirements (e.g. reading, meetings, journals) which
might be required.

     As noted above, this course is a complement to the actual internship experience itself.
Your performance in the seminar is evaluated separately from the internship (see below), but
it is obviously closely related, and the faculty liaisons and your professor will keep close contact throughout
the semester.

 Structure of the Course

     We will meet twice weekly during the first two and last two weeks of the semester.  The
first two weeks are devoted to readings and discussion of ethical, legal, and professional
issues that you need to think about while you participate in the internship.  During the rest of
the semester we will meet only on Thursdays.  During those meetings we will attempt to see
how the major themes of the seminar (e.g., legal and ethical issues, professionalism,
relationship between theory and practice) can be seen in the work at the various sites.   At
times, the professor will ask you to report in some depth what you have been doing, how successfully you are meeting your goals, and how you are reflecting on your internship experience.  In the last two weeks, each intern will make a presentation to the group which evaluates the internship in the light of his or her goals and expectations.

Assignments

     As  noted above, the purpose of this seminar is to help you reflect on your internship
experience and to integrate the learning you do at the site into your academic work.  You will
do this in three ways.

First, you will reflect on your experience with your colleagues (fellow students) during
the seminar sessions.  The interaction between you should afford you the opportunity to
hear responses to your ideas as well as to give other students a sense of what your
internship experience is like.  This means that your attendance and active participation in
the seminar sessions are essential, and the professor will expect you to have thought about your experiences and to be able to demonstrate an understanding of how your experiences
relate to the general topics we will be discussing.   The professor will also ask you to lead the
discussion on at least one occasion and to write a brief statement of your goals and a
mid-semester evaluation; these will be treated as part of your participation score.
Second, you will write a 12-15 page paper on a topic which integrates an aspect of your
internship experience with your academic work (i.e., theory and research in a particular
topic area).  You have some leeway in deciding how to make that integration;
find creative ways of bringing the light of scholarship and research to bear on your
internship experience. The professor will evaluate your paper on the basis of 1) your use of current and relevant literature and research to illuminate your topic, 2) your success in
integrating your internship experience with that literature, and 3) the organization,
coherence, and quality of your writing.  The due dates for the paper proposal and final paper are listed on the course outline below.   The professor will be happy to help you as you write
the paper, and will even read and comment upon a draft of it, provided you give him at
least one week to do so.
    Third, at the end of the semester, you will give a brief presentation reflecting on your
    experience at the internship site.

 The relative weights of the three aspects of the course are as follows:

      Attendance and participation: 40%
      Paper:    50%
      Presentation:   10%

Readings

 There are several assigned readings for the seminar on reserve in the library:

     Alston, K. (1998, Sept-Oct.).  Hands off consensual sex.   Academe, 84 (5), 32-33.

     Bersoff, D. N., Field, R. I., Anderer, S. J., & Zaplac, T. (1999).  Law and mental health
professionals: Pennsylvania.  Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
(excerpts)

     Keith-Spiegel, P., & Koocher, G. P. (1985).  Ethics in psychology: Professional standards
and cases.  New York: Random House.  [Read Chapter 3: “Privacy, confidentiality, and
record-keeping.”]

     Knapp, S., VandeCreek, L., & Phillips, A. (1992).  Pennsylvania law and psychology.
Harrisburg, PA:  Pennsylvania Psychological Association.  [Read pp. 127-133: “Procedures
for civil commitment”]

     Lamb, D. H., & Catanzaro, S. J. (1998).  Sexual and nonsexual boundary violations
involving psychologists, clients, supervisees, and students: Implications for professional
practice.  Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 29, 498-503.

     Lane, A. J. (1998, Sept-Oct.).  “Consensual” relations in the academy: Gender, power, and
sexuality.  Academe, 84 (5), 24-31.

     McRoy, R. G., Freeman, E. M., & Logan, S. (1986).  Strategies for teaching students about
termination.  The Clinical Supervisor, 4(4), 45-56.

     Pope, K. S., & Bouhoutsos, J. C. (1986).  Sexual intimacy between therapists and patients.
New York: Praeger.  [Read Chapter 1: “Varieties of sexual intimacy and how they occur.”]

     Welch, B. L. (1999).  Boundary violations: In the eye of the beholder.  Insight, Edition 1.
Amityville, NY:  Americal Professional Agency, Inc.

Confidentiality

     Because of the nature of much of applied work in psychology, confidentiality is very
important. We will discuss confidentiality in detail in class, and you will probably discuss it
with your site supervisor also.  But for the time being, please remember one general rule:  Do
not discuss the clients you meet in your internship by name, or indeed with any information
that could conceivably identify them (and remember that we live in a small town), with anyone
outside the site.  This applies to your friends, your roommates, your parents, other potential
job or internship sites -- anybody except the faculty liaison for your internship, and if
necessary, your professor.  In class we will also follow the rule of excluding all identifying information
about any clients we discuss, and the rules about confidentiality apply to any information you
hear during our class meetings.   If you have any questions about confidentiality, or if issues
arise in which you are not sure what to do, please talk to your site supervisor, your faculty
liaison, or your professor.
 

 
Course Outline & Schedule
 
Date Topic  Reading
1.  08/31 Introductions & Goals 
2. 09/05 Boundary Issues I (goal sheets due)   Lamb & Catanzaro; Welch 
09/07  Boundary Issues II Pope & Bouhoutsos; Lane; Alston 
3. 09/12  Confidentiality & Duty to Protect  Keith-Spiegel; Knapp et al. (61-67) 
09/14 Care of Children and Juveniles  Bersoff et al. (Part I) 
4. 09/19 Civil Commitment & Right to Treatment Knapp et al. (127-133); Bersoff (Part II)
5. 09/26 Politics and Status
6. 10/03 Current Issues 
7. 10/10 Current Issues
8. 10/17 Fall Break
9. 10//24 Current Issues (paper proposals due) 
10. 10/31  Current Issues (mid-term evals due)      
11. 11/07 Current Issues
12. 11/14  Current Issues
13. 11/21 Current Issues
11/22-26  Thanksgiving Break (no class) 
14. 11/28 Termination McRoy, Freeman, & Logan
15. 12/05 Student Presentations (final papers due)
12/07  Student Presentations
16. 12/12  Student Presentations