Internship
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G. The program requires completion of a supervised internship in the student’s designated program area of 600 clock hours, begun after successful completion of the practicum. The internship is intended to reflect the comprehensive work experience of a professional counselor appropriate to the designated program area. Each student’s internship includes all of the following:
- At least 240 clock hours of direct service, including experience leading groups.
Response: After the successful completion of practicum (COU 880), students may begin their internship. Interns complete a minimum of 240 direct client contact hours over a period of between 1 – 3 semesters within a continuous 12 month period. As designated on the COU 881 syllabus, these direct hours must include experience leading groups.
2. Weekly interaction that averages one hour per week of individual and/or triadic supervision throughout the internship, usually performed by the onsite supervisor.
Response: Interns meet with their designated site supervisor who has been pre-approved by the Clinical Coordinator. Interns meet with their site supervisor for a minimum of one hour per week of supervision as detailed in the Supervision Contract and the Supervision Log. The Supervision Contract and Supervision Log are located in the Practicum and Internship Handbook.
3. An average of 1 1/2 hours per week of group supervision provided on a regularschedule throughout the internship and performed by a program faculty member.
Response: Interns participate in internship (COU 881). During the fall and spring semesters, this class meets every other week for five hours providing an average of 1 ½ hours of week group supervision. These classes are led by core departmental faculty and by adjuncts.
4. The opportunity for the student to become familiar with a variety of professional activities and resources in addition to direct service (e.g., record keeping,assessment instruments, supervision, information and referral, in-service and staff meetings).
Response: As noted in the course syllabus(COU 881), interns (both school counseling and mental health counseling) are required to participate in a variety of experiences that represent the professional duties of an individual employed in their chosen field/site. Duties vary depending on individual sites and individual student career goals.
5. The opportunity for the student to develop program-appropriate audio/video recordings for use in supervision or to receive live supervision of his or her interactions with clients.
Response: Internship sites must allow for the program-appropriate video-recording of sessions, as per signed release with individual clients and student parents and/or legal guardians. Site supervisors provide a Supervision Contractin which they stipulate how the intern’s recordings will be reviewed by them. Live observation of counseling is also possible/arranged at particular sites. Again, this information will be included in the Supervision Contact. Faculty for the COU 881 course do not require a specific number of tapes for use in faculty-led group supervision and formats for group supervision are left to the individual faculty member’s discretion..
6. Evaluation of the student’s counseling performance throughout the internship, including documentation of a formal evaluation after the student completes the internship by a program faculty member in consultation with the site supervisor.
Response: Interns receive informal formative verbal supervision evaluation and commentary via their meetings with site supervisors and during the faculty-led group supervision which is the major component of COU 881. Additionally, interns receive formal written feedback/evaluation from their site supervisors at the middle and the end of the semester. During the spring of 2011, CEP faculty voted to use the Professional Counselor Performance Evaluation (PCPE)as a summative evaluation to be completed by the COU 881 instructor at the semester’s end. Evaluation via the PCPE is to begin during the summer semester 2011. Copies of the Midterm Evaluation and the Final Evaluationscompleted by the site supervisors and signed off on by the students and the university supervisors as well as a Site Evaluationcompleted by the student on the site they did their practicum or internship in are located in the Practicum and Internship Handbook.