Welcome from the Training Director
Welcome!!
Whatever brings you here, you'll find us glad to talk about our passion for our APA Accredited doctoral internship in psychology! This can be such a formative year, not only a time when skills are honed, but a time of personal and professional transformation.
"The environment you all created to allow for vulnerable use-of-self was truly life-changing in both my professional and personal lives."
Woven throughout this internship experience are two central, guiding questions: Who are you as a therapist? How are you therapeutic?
The journey to explore and understand the answers to these questions can be challenging, requiring you to face doubts and uncertainties and sort through the many felt pressures and requirements of graduate training. And maybe for that very reason, articulating your answers is often an experience of increasing freedom, joyful identity clarity, and a sense of capability.
"One of the most significant areas of growth at BUCC was developing and further clarifying my professional identity and goals, and learning to own them with confidence. During my time at BUCC, the training committee, program, and experiences helped build confidence around what kind of therapist I want to become and helped clarify my professional values."
Fundamentally, we believe that clinical interventions are centered in a real relationship between persons. By highlighting the self of the therapist as the primary instrument of therapy, we help trainees learn how self-reflection and self-awareness make them better practitioners. To facilitate that self-involving work for interns, we embrace a relational model, work toward intercultural effectiveness, and hold our value for the gifts that each trainee brings.
"The psychological safety and attuned responses I received to showing up vulnerably, really helped me to grow in flexible use of myself as a tool for change." * "BUCC's emphasis on interpersonal process was not just a theory we were learning to practice in therapy but was repeatedly, frequently modeled through experiences."
Each of us is a mix of gifts and flaws, and some days we are on our A game and others feel like a struggle. At BUCC, our shared Christian identity is both a source of support and challenge as we work to give our best. Support, in that we are grounded in the love of God and able to rely on his grace. Challenge, in that we are called to imitate the example of Christ in responding to difficulty and difference by leaning in with love. At Baylor, we are aware of the many ways, both helpful and hurtful, that religion and spirituality can show up in the lives of both client and therapist. Learning to work with this aspect of identity and culture is a feature of internship.
"Some of the topics most helpful to me were those around integration of spirituality/religion." * "I also appreciate the ways in which faith is incorporated into our understanding of valuing diversity."
Approaching intercultural engagement with cultural humility is another priority that is grounded in faith at BUCC. All counseling is multicultural, and a value for each person and their unique experience drives us to develop a humility in our interactions, particularly as they relate to identity and culture. Though this is woven throughout internship training, we make space for focused training through our Multicultural Seminar Group, which involves reading, discussion, participating in campus events, and learning through encountering the experiences of others.
"I "caught" a lot just by interacting with the staff on cultural topics, and then our intentional engagement in cultural discussions (in training, in supervision) further enhanced my multicultural development and work."
Another exciting aspect of our training is the emphasis on developing supervisory skills. During this internship, trainees participate in supervision of practicum students, splitting supervision with an experienced psychologist supervisor who then provides supervision of the interns supervision. Our students learn to apply supervisory interventions within a relational framework, while assisting a practicum student to consider these same relational aspects with their clients.
"I felt that Sup of Sup was particularly supportive of and helpful in my developing my identity as a supervisor, specifically -- they noticed and encouraged my strengths and helped increase awareness of my blind spots by bringing attention to my internal experience."
The rest of the website has more information about these key experiences and additional highlights. These include a Trauma Recovery Supervision Group, group therapy co-facilitation, a group supervision with the whole cohort, outreach experiences, and much more. By the time you finish internship, you will have had an opportunity to work with and learn from each of our staff. We know that each person who works here has a unique impact, and we look forward to offering you the opportunity to absorb something good from each of them!
"From the beginning, the integrity of every member of the staff that was involved in our training was so evident to me -- the BUCC does not just talk the talk of use of self and interpersonal process and caring for others, the BUCC actually walks the walk.”
Please look around the site and feel free to ask questions at Ed_Rogers1@baylor.edu. We welcome your application and look forward to getting to know you a bit more!
Ed Rogers, Psy.D
Assistant Director and Training Director
