Curriculum
General Expectations and Requirements
The department has a set of expectations and requirements that apply to all graduate students in our programs, unless students have successfully petitioned for special consideration. Graduate students are expected to be continuously involved in research throughout the course of their training program. Research involvement begins immediately with a faculty supervised research apprenticeship or a faculty sponsored project of the student's design. Later, students may collaborate with other students on a project. In addition, students are expected to attend weekly colloquia, which are presented by eminent scholars, researchers, and therapists. These visits give students the opportunity to interact with visitors in a variety of formal and informal settings. Students must also complete a master's thesis, comprehensive examinations, and a doctoral dissertation. Students are also expected to obtain some type of teaching experience, which includes enrolling in a seminar on teaching and pedagogy. In the first two years of the program, teaching involvement ordinarily entails assisting faculty in undergraduate courses. In the third and fourth years (usually following the completion of one's master's thesis), most clinical students are supported through clinical training placements, though some are supported by teaching assistantships that carry responsibility for instructing either laboratory sections of statistics and methods courses, or small sections of introductory courses. Regardless of whether students intend to pursue a position requiring teaching following the graduation, we believe that this experience assists students in developing effective communication skills that are invaluable in any job setting. Satisfying the minimum requirements of the program, however, is only a start toward becoming an active researcher, that is, someone who is part of the community of psychologists committed to understanding problems in the field. Much of students' education and training takes place in informal settings, which include daily discussions with other students and faculty, reading current journals, attending conferences, and presenting their work to the field. Each year, a substantial number of students present papers at national and international conferences and have papers accepted for publication in scholarly journals.