College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University

National interns

Four psychology doctoral students will spend the next year as interns in both hospital and university settings.
In the not-to-distant past, it wasn't that difficult for psychology doctoral students to get internships.

That hasn't been the case the past couple of years according to Norm Scott, associate professor of psychology. In fact, the non-placement rate of students who compete nationally for internships stood at 14% last year.

Which makes the feats of four ISU psychology students all that more remarkable.

"The last few years, the competition for these national internships has become very, very intense," Scott said. "This year our students have not only been placed, but placed in high quality settings."

The four will begin their one-year, paid internships this fall as they complete a Ph.D. degree with a formal specialization in counseling psychology. The students and their assignments include:

*Carolyn Karr, Veteran's Administration (VA) Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio;

*Lori Lindley, University of Utah Counseling Center in Salt Lake City;

*Sandra Jensen, VA Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Penn.; and

*Denise Allumbaugh, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale Counseling Center.

Scott says the four competed with other doctoral students throughout the nation for these and other internships. Typically each institution or medical center will receive as many as 90 applications before selecting no more than four interns each.

The 12-month internship is a required component of doctoral work in counseling psychology at ISU. The internship is typically taken in the fifth year of the program and commences after completion of all coursework, preliminary examinations and the development of an approved dissertation proposal.

"The internship is extremely important for these students," Scott says. "It's an opportunity to develop additional professional experience."

That's the main reason why each of the four soon-to-be-interns are looking forward to their new assignments this fall.

"I expect the internship to fill in areas lacking from the graduate school experience," Allumbaugh said.

Jensen agrees with her.

"In graduate school we all took the same classes," she said. "Now we had the opportunity to search out structured internships of what we want to do and what type of environment we wanted to do it in.

"And I think we all found what we were looking for."

For Lindley, the environment she was looking for was a college campus. During her internship at the University of Utah, she hopes to combine her work in that school's counseling center with classroom teaching.

"I think this internship will be an important transition for me from student to professional," she said. "What I will be doing in Utah will be more in line with what I want to do with my career."