Doctoral Internship:

Philosophy and Training Model

Valuing Diversity

All staff at the CSDC are committed to respecting, affirming, and supporting individual and multicultural diversity. Examples of diversity include but are not limited to race, ethnicity, age, ability, socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, and religion. Interns are expected to acknowledge and value these intersections of identity within oneself, with peers, supervisors, colleagues, consultants, and in the student population they serve. It is our goal to make it a life-long journey to strive to work effectively with people from all backgrounds.

We recognize that everyone has their biases and assumptions. With this is mind, we encourage an open dialogue that includes awareness and reflections of these biases so they can be understood and managed in a way that reduces or eliminates any potential harm it may cause. We recognize this can be difficult, and sometimes may evoke very strong feelings during discussion. This makes it all the more important.  We value inclusion and “respect for people’s rights and dignity” (APA Ethics Code, Principle E), and infuse these values in all areas of training. All staff are expected to effectively work with colleagues and clients, regardless of their similarities or differences.

Experiential Learning Philosophy

The Doctoral Internship at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa's Counseling and Student Development Center embraces a philosophy of Experiential Learning to train and prepare interns for the general practice of professional psychology. An experiential learning philosophy recognizes that people learn through concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation (Kolb, 1984). Experiential learning results in awareness, knowledge, skills, and the ability to apply these different types of learning to future experience. As trainers and supervisors, the CSDC faculty recognizes our role as facilitators of reflection, conceptualization, experimentation, and application.

Practitioner-Scholar Model

The internship is organized around a Practitioner-Scholar model (Stoltenberg et. al., 2000). We recognize that science and practice are interlocking skills that form the foundation of psychological knowledge and its application (Belar & Perry, 1992). At CSDC, the training faculty expects interns to learn to practice psychology in a manner informed by psychological theory and research. Although research is not required as part of the internship, we encourage interns to learn about evidence-based practice and to become familiar with interventions that have been supported by research. The program recognizes that many interns come from scientist-practitioner graduate programs and we believe that the CSDC internship complements their training and is consistent with the long-term goals of scientist-practitioner training.