Internship class

							                        Psychology 300c - Internship in Psychology
                                      Winter 2008
                                 Professor: Tim Kasser
                         SMAC E-119, x7283, tkasser@knox.edu


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.