Missions
Mission of K-State's Counseling and Psychological Services
Kansas State University Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), in support of the overall mission of the University, provides high-quality professional services to help all students meet their full potential – personally, academically, and socially. Within an accepting, sustaining, and compassionate setting, CAPS provides a professional resource to attend to our students' psychological needs by promoting well-being, alleviating concerns, facilitating problem resolution, and enhancing their success.
As a professional staff, we value our culturally diverse campus community. We are committed to ethical and professionally competent behavior consistent with our training, experience, and this university's mission. While appropriately protecting confidentiality, we work collaboratively with other entities on and off campus to promote a safe and healthy environment. During times when a critical event may occur, we are ready to offer timely response through consultation, debriefing, and follow-up to lessen trauma and promote resolution.
Mission of Internship in Health Service Psychology
Training philosophy
As a staff, we value our training program and make training activities a high priority. Our psychology internship program aims to develop and train competent generalists in health service psychology prepared for post-doctoral practice. Our internship program does not* use distance technologies in training or providing clinical services.
Our fundamental goal is the development of ethical, competent, generalist psychologists trained in the local clinical scientist model (Diddams, MacDonald, & Skidmore, 2004; Stricker & Trierweiler, 1995; Trierweiler & Stricker, 1998). Our educational focus is preparation in the applied practice of clinical and counseling psychology, grounded in the body of scientific knowledge and ethical principles of our profession.
Our primary mode of training is “learning by doing.” In addition to this experiential training focus, we are aware that we are all members of a broader global community. Consequently, we provide a range of training seminars, training supervisors, and practical, experiential training experiences. To the extent possible, we use the naturally occurring events, not only in the university community but nationally and globally as well for opportunities in training. These experiences often provide a valuable means of meeting training objectives.
Training values
Our internship program is committed to the following:
- We are committed to training in the Local Clinical Scientist model; an augmentation of the Scientist-Practitioner Model.
- We are committed to a broad range of skill development encompassing counseling, therapeutic, programmatic and educational interventions.
- We are committed to training in understanding and respecting human experience and to providing effective services to clientele in collaboration with colleagues.
- We are committed to facilitating the development of professional identity and professionalism.
- We are committed to flexibility in developing each intern's training program.
Training competences
To meet the aim of the training program and embody the values of the training program, we use the following nine profession-wide competencies (PWCs) to structure the training program.
The PWCs provide: sufficient breadth to ensure that the training program is adequately training competent generalists who are prepared for post-doctoral practice; a structure for the evaluation of interns in the training program; alignment with the Standards of Accreditation as published by the APA’s Commission on Accreditation. They are:
- Research
- Ethical and legal standards
- Individual and cultural diversity
- Professional values and attitudes
- Communication and interpersonal skills
- Assessment
- Intervention
- Supervision
- Consultation and interprofessional/interdisciplinary skills.
Each intern is given at least one opportunity to demonstrate their competence in each of these nine areas. For instance, throughout the internship year, interns will demonstrate their competence with consultation and interprofessional/interdisciplinary skills through outreach activities.