 |
|
|
|
|
|
Internship handbook (Table of Contents) (Online Forms) |
Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology ("MAC") The
MAC Internship Handbook: Confusion over the definitions of basic
vocabulary can sometimes cause misunderstandings
between students, faculty, and agency personnel. Such
misunderstandings can often be avoided if everyone has the same
definitions of important terms. An internship experience is a primary component of virtually all training programs in the helping professions. It is also an expected requirement of most credentialing agencies (such as the Washington State Department of Health, Division of Licensing). An internship represents the culmination of your graduate training in counseling psychology. The internship constitutes a trial experience in professional work under the direction of an "on-site" supervisor and an academic faculty member at the educational institution. An internship has three important consequences:
What is the "Internship Series"? In the beginning of the MAC Program, there was no coursework that accompanied the internship experience. However, an internship class is a requirement of the DOH, Division of Licensing. In addition, most MAC students felt the need for more contact with MAC faculty and fellow internship students. For those reasons, the MAC Program began to offer a two-course series of seminar/workshop class work entitled MAC 691: "Counseling Internship I" and MAC 692: "Counseling Internship II." This series is designed to be taken concurrently with the 600 hours of supervised field experience.
The two internship classes were designed to provide the means to integrate, consolidate, and synthesize academic knowledge with real-life work experience through case-staffing and clinical evaluation. The classes provide direct feedback of clinical style using specific cases drawn from the off-campus internship. What are "Internship Hours"? Students are often confused about what activities constitute the 600 hours of internship experience. When you first begin your internship experience, you will spend a fair amount of time simply learning about the agency: how it functions, who the overt and covert leaders are, what the official and unofficial ground-rules consist of, and how to relate to the clientele within the agency guidelines and structure. Other acceptable activities include attending workshops requested by your on-site supervisor or involved in in-service presentations at the agency; transporting or interacting with patients or clients in the milieu, during meals, and so on; and in required case staffing. All of these types of activities count toward internship hours. What does not count is travel to and from the internship site, time spent in the internship classes at Saint Martin's University, time reading the texts and preparing assignments, and all other activities not directly related to completing the on-site portion of the internship experience. As you begin to fit in to your internship, proportionally more time will be spent on the real meat of the experience: face-to-face counseling, co-therapy, being assigned as the primary therapist, and other mental health-related activities. This pattern of a slow beginning is one of the reasons the MAC faculty discourage two short internships instead of one full experience.
Do yourself a favor. Consider the definition of internship hours carefully. If you are merely "filling time" in irrelevant activities, your internship experience becomes little more than a very expensive "hoop" to jump through, rather than the most significant educational experience of the entire program. First-semester interns are given slightly more structure in what constitutes acceptable internship hours. They typically start an internship experience with a relatively low rate of face-to-face, client contact. They may see only two or three clients a week and, then, only in a co-therapy context. By the end of the internship experience, the clinical intern usually experiences more client contact. They may see up to a dozen clients per week and be the "primary therapist" for a few of them. Keep in mind that it takes time to demonstrate sufficient preparation and personal confidence for the agency to trust you with that degree of clinical involvement. A simple rule of thumb is that, over the two semesters of the internship, the intern needs to have spent an average of at least 50 percent of the total hours (300 clock hours) on face-to-face, client contact. How Many Hours May I Collect? You may wonder how quickly or how slowly you will be allowed to collect internship hours. That question can be somewhat difficult to answer. Let's begin with the minimum number of hours you can collect. If you are doing a volunteer internship in the evenings or having difficulty getting hours, you may wonder about how many would be the least number of hours to make a legitimate internship experience. The problem is not only failing to make satisfactory progress but also that an internship of only a couple of hours per week does not allow a feeling of involvement and continuity.
If you only amass the minimum number of hours, you will not reach 300 total hours by the end of the semester and will need to extend your work into the interim period between semesters or even into another semester. If this turns out to be the case for you, you should know that it will not be necessary for you to enroll in, or to pay for, any additional academic credit hours. For some students, it is easy to amass hours. Perhaps they're doing an internship as part of a regular employment or are working at a site where they're given a generous number of cases or administrative problems to solve. If you are this fortunate, you will probably wish to collect the maximum hours possible. But, how many is that? The important point is that the internship experience needs to involve enough time to follow some cases or administrative problems over time. In addition, it will be necessary for you to be working on your internship throughout the semester-long academic portion of Counseling Internship I and II. For these reasons, the maximum number of hours that you may amass per week is determined by the number of weeks available for internship work during the semester you are working on your internship. That will vary according to whether or not you collected hours between semesters and whether or not part of your internship was completed over the shorter summer semester.
If you have less than 300 hours remaining in Internship II, the hours per week will need to be reduced. You should not finish the internship before the end of your second semester in the Internship series. |
|
|
|
Email contact: (MAC@stmartin.edu) |
