First and Second Year:
Easing into Clinical Practice. Coursework in the practice of clinical psychology, which begins during the first year to provide the foundational competencies of professional practice, continues throughout the program. The clinical orientation of the program is best characterized as cognitive behavioral, with faculty members representing specialties within the various sub-areas (e.g., behavior analysis, acceptance and commitment therapy, cognitive therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, exposure therapy, parent-child interaction therapy, rational-emotive therapy).
Typically, students are assigned to a faculty member’s specialty clinic during their first year and they begin observing and participating in the provision of clinical services. The goal is to ease students into clinical work early on under the supervision of faculty members as well as advanced students in the program.
Specialty clinics and programs directed by the clinical faculty are:
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Clinic
- Anxiety and Depression Clinic
- Child and Parent Psychotherapy Services Clinic
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy Consultation Team
- Research on Eating and Anxiety Disorders Program
- Phobia and Trauma Clinic
- Serious and Persistent Mental Illness Program
Generally, these specialty clinics operate year-round and serve the community surrounding Hofstra University. For programs located on campus at the Psychological Evaluation Research and Counseling Clinic (PERC), each assessment and intervention room is equipped with digital recording equipment so that sessions can be easily recorded and viewed to enhance the effectiveness of supervision.
Third and Fourth Year:
Externship Placements. In addition to continued participation in the specialty clinics, during their third and fourth year students further their clinical experience by applying for externship placements that are available in the Long Island/New York City community. A faculty member in our program oversees the application process. Clinical externship placements are supervised by on-site doctoral-level staff members at the agency where the PhD student is placed and constitute a full year of training at each site. Externship sites are quite diverse and include outpatient or inpatient sites with a range of patient populations (hospitals, private agencies, public mental health clinics, college counseling clinics, forensic institutions, etc.). Students often pursue externship training that is consistent with their interests and career goals.
Our students' clinical externship placements during the last few years have included local sites (i.e., Long Island, New York City) such as Albert Ellis Institute, American Institute for Cognitive Therapy, Biobehavioral Institute, CBT/DBT Associates, Cognitive and Behavioral Associates, Cognitive Behavioral Consultants of Westchester and Manhattan, Columbia University Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders (CUCARD), Hofstra University Student Counseling Center, Kingsbrook Hospital, Maimonides Medical Center, Montefiore Child and Adolescent Program, Northport VA, Northshore/LIJ Hospital, Pilgrim State Hospital, NY Presbyterian Personality Disorders Clinic, NYU Bellevue Hospital Inpatient, NYU Child Study Center, Rikers Island jail, and St. John's Episcopal Hospital.
Fifth/Sixth Year:
Predoctoral Internship. A one-year full-time predoctoral internship is required and is typically completed in the fifth or sixth year (Note: Students who choose to go out on internship during their sixth year usually spend the fifth year completing their dissertation). As is true for all APA-accredited clinical psychology doctoral programs, the internship match is nationwide and may require moving to a distant location for one year (our students have been at internships as close as a few miles from Hofstra and as far as 3000 miles in California). Students are required to complete their dissertation proposal, and to have the requisite personal and clinical skills, before they are approved to apply for the internship. Application to APA-accredited internships is done through the national match (see APPIC.org).
