CORE TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Interns present two trainings, of at least one hour in length, about a body of psychological knowledge to a target audience. The first, done early in the year, is done on the unit on which the intern is primarily working, and is designed to help staff recognize the intern’s strength and utility, which can help integrate the intern into the team, and teach the intern important lessons about presenting talks and representing what they do. It should be on a topic of familiarity or expertise of the intern. The second talk should ideally be more community focused, and cover some aspect of diversity. This could include a discussion of racial and ethnic disparities in behavioral healthcare. Or it could address issues in the treatment of Latino and African-American individuals and families; the role of spirituality; GLBT issues; gender issues; ability/disability issues; ageism; issues of socioeconomic class. We encourage interns to present outside of UBHC/UCHC if possible. Audiences can be mental health professionals inside University Hospital, or professionals or non-professionals who have requested a training from UBHC (e.g., teachers, a church group, DYFS workers). Interns can work together on presentations, but each intern should have responsibility for an identifiable aspect of the training, and each intern should conduct a presentation that lasts at least one hour. Interns formulate a few main objectives, and collect administer and collect evaluations from the target audience and submit a self-evaluation of the project with suggestions for changes in the presentation in the future.

The goal of this experience is for interns to develop the ability to translate academic knowledge into language understandable to others and to contribute to the development of psychological knowledge in a target population. Invariably, professional psychologists find themselves in the position of teaching others in some context. Like the Outcome Assessment/Program Development Experience, the aim is to prepare interns for future leadership roles, to learn to market their strengths, and foster collaborative relationships with community agencies.