Message from the Director of Clinical Psychology Training
September 6, 2024
Dear Internship Applicants:
Congratulations on being at this point in your graduate training! Thank you for your interest in the Clinical Psychology Doctoral Internship Program at the University of Chicago Medicine (UCM). We are pleased to provide you with our updated 2025-26 internship information. We are accredited by the American Psychological Association through 2029.
Our clinical psychology doctoral internship program is based in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Chicago, in the Adult and Child sections. The internship has been an important component of departmental training for many years and is integrated within the interdisciplinary educational mission of the Department and the larger Medical Center. Our internship is designed to train health service psychologists for entry level practice in academic settings. The hallmarks of our program include socially-responsive, evidence-based approaches to assessment, intervention, and consultation and the integration of science and practice. We provide training that focuses on breadth through our general Adult and Child clinics, while allowing our interns to develop an area of focus through their tracks. Most importantly, our internship is individualized and can be tailored to meet our interns’ specific training goals. Each intern receives at least four hours of individual supervision each week and attends several hours of didactics designed to enhance acquisition of profession-wide competencies in health service psychology. In addition, our program promotes the development of scholarly interests through the availability of protected research time to work on dissertation completion or collaborative projects with training faculty. We believe that we offer a challenging and supportive setting for obtaining doctoral internship training in Clinical Psychology.
The COVID-19 pandemic was the source of many changes to clinical practice and training in health service psychology. We continue to respond to the level of public health risk posed by COVID-19 and other infections with the safety of our trainees, staff, faculty, and patients as our paramount concern, while continuing to meet the needs of the communities we serve. We are grateful for the scientific strides that have contributed to a greater understanding of disease and the availability of vaccination. All employees at UCM are required to be vaccinated for COVID-19 and influenza (with medical or religious exemptions available in rare circumstances). Our program is primarily in person and on site, although we do offer the flexibility of telehealth to patients who request these services. These telehealth visits are usually provided from on site. We provide didactics and supervision in person unless video formats are indicated for convenience, flexibility, and/or safety. In order to facilitate interprofessional collaboration, socialization among interns and with our faculty, development of a support system for our trainees, and a general sense of community, we currently require interns and faculty to be on site for a minimum of three days per week, with most trainees on site every day. Our training program, department, division, and institution follow infection control procedures and national and state regulations as informed by science and safety. We are committed to maintaining the integrity of our training program and the acquisition of profession-wide competencies while balancing the safety of our trainees, faculty, and patients. Over the past three years, we learned that it is impossible to have definite expectations for the future, and we recognize that ongoing flexibility and creativity is necessary.
The Clinical Psychology Internship at the University of Chicago Medicine is comprised of four tracks: Adult/Health Psychology, Adult Neuropsychology, Child/Pediatric Psychology, and Pediatric Neuropsychology. We will be recruiting and matching with one intern in the Adult Neuropsychology, Child Psychology and Pediatric Neuropsychology Tracks, and two interns in the Adult/Health track. You may apply to only one track which should be specified in your cover letter. Applicants who apply to more than one track will be disqualified from both tracks.
Our application deadline is Friday, November 1, 2024 (11:59 pm EST). You will be contacted by email if you are selected for an interview. We will conduct virtual interviews on the following days in December 2024: Friday 12/6/24, Monday 12/9/24, and Friday 12/13/24. Our annual stipend is $44,000 and is offered as part of a comprehensive package of benefits.
Before deciding to apply to our program, please review our updated brochure very carefully. We want you to fully appreciate the structure of our program and what we have to offer. We hope that you will apply to our internship program because you believe it is aligned with your professional goals for training and your future career development. We also encourage applications from individuals from underrepresented groups. Should you match with us, we will, in turn, work to provide you with the skills necessary to become a health service psychologist who is able to integrate science and practice in an academic environment serving a diverse population.
Read on for more details about our program! We wish you luck as you navigate this challenging process and complete your degree. We appreciate the time you will invest in completing the application to our program and promise to thoroughly review your materials. We look forward to learning more about you and possibly “meeting” you. If you have questions that are not answered in our written materials, feel free to contact us by email. Please note that we do not offer informational meetings via phone or video prior to our program’s formal interviews later in the season.
Sincerely,
Shona N. Vas, Ph.D., ABPP
Director, Clinical Psychology Training
Director, Cognitive-Behavior Therapy Program
Associate Professor, Psychiatry & Behavioral Neuroscience
Contact Information: svas@bsd.uchicago.edu
Note: The Commission on Accreditation requires that all APA accredited internship programs provide the standardized tables of admissions, support, and initial placement data. These tables are updated annually for the Clinical Psychology Doctoral Internship Program at the University of Chicago Medicine. Questions about our program’s accreditation status may be directed to:
American Psychological Association
Office of Program Consultation and Accreditation
750 First Street NE,
Washington, DC 20002-4242
Phone: (202) 336-5979
Web: http://www.apa.org/ed/accreditation
