Psychology Internship Consortium

Immaculata University’s Psychology Internship Consortium places a strong emphasis on diversity by striving to create an atmosphere and supportive environment that includes respecting, listening to and valuing multiple perspectives. We recognize the importance of training interns to exercise cultural humility, as this is critical in reducing health disparities and providing quality care to clients with diverse values, beliefs and behaviors. We believe exposure to cultural information, diverse cases and discussion creates cognitive growth and builds strong scaffolding for interns to incorporate diversity into their clinical work. We strive to enhance diversity competencies by integrating diversity into the didactic training curriculum, supervision, clinical training experiences, recruitment and retention efforts and ongoing educational opportunities. In addition, formal case presentations include a diversity component to facilitate dialogue, peer consultation and active considerations of multicultural considerations. Students are also encouraged to engage in independent didactics that focus on cultural humility and adapting interventions to be culturally sensitive to the populations they serve.

Regarding recruitment, we seek diverse applicants and those who have strong interest in and sensitivity to diversity as evidenced by the student’s AAPI. Our goal is to continuously improve in this area.

Supervisors focus on and model multicultural competence in the supervisory relationship, which enhances the intern’s ability to grow and develop competence. Continuing education workshops on diversity and supervision are offered for Site Training Directors and supervisors, to provide them with current resources and skills necessary to practice within a multicultural framework, and incorporate diversity into the supervision process. During the past five years, intern ratings of supervisors are consistently high on end-of-year evaluations regarding the item “addressed diversity issues in supervision.”

Students in the IU-PIC attend a monthly 8-hour didactic seminar. Recent presentations focused on diversity have included:

• A Multicultural Approach to Supervision: Exploring Diversity within the Supervisory Experience – Catrina Vitagliano, Psy.D.
• Multicultural Competency: Training, Ethical Considerations, and Applied Examples – Mary Tabit, Psy.D.
• Multicultural Perspectives in CBT: Applications and Supervision Considerations – Mary Tabit, Psy.D.
• Ethical Supervision informed by Multicultural and Post-Colonial Practices and Belief Systems – Daniel Lee, Psy.D., CSP
• Foundations of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Implicit Bias – Monika Williams Shealey, Ph.D.
• Integrating Diversity in the Work of a Psychologist – Francien Chenoweth Richardson, Psy.D.
• Addressing the Implications of Antiracist Stance in Behavioral Health – John Muehsam, Ph.D., LSW, CAADC, CPRP and Dora Eaton, MBA, MS, LPC
• Journal article facilitated discussion: 
  Kamal, K., Li, J.J., Hahm, H.C., & Liu, C.H. (2021). Psychiatric impacts of the COVID-19 global pandemic on U.S. sexual and gender minority young adults. Psychiatry Research, 299, 113855. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2020.08.001