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Department of Psychology

Dr. Ault's Mission Statement

John T. Ault, Ph.D.
Last updated: 4 April 2005

Dr. Ault’s Priorities for the Practicum and Internship Courses

As a professional educator and clinical psychologist, my overall mission for the practicum/internship courses is to provide students with the tools they need to (a) become healthy, well balanced professionals, and (b) successfully avoid exploitation, burnout, and devastating errors. The Human Services field has many predators and parasites in it, along with victims and rescuers. I want students to have the needed perspective so they can join in the rescue effort without themselves becoming victims.

Within this mission I have the following major goals:

1. Define and illustrate well a proper professional relationship, so that (a) students see the ideal clearly, and (b) when circumstances do necessitate deviations or compromises students will have the means by which to choose the best of the alternatives.

2. Offer real world applications in professional service settings. Through these experiences students should develop greater self-understanding, clinical skills, a professional identity, and closer relationships with fellow students. These field experiences should also enhance the meaning of other psychology courses.

3. Develop student ability to see the role-confusion problem and provide options for resolving it (personal level application).

4. Develop student ability to see the confusion of models problem and provide ways to handle it (agency level application).

5. Introduce students to the legal/ethical expectations of professionals and provide them with a list of ways to protect themselves amidst the many risks and conflicts (societal level application).

6. Heighten student awareness of the need for training when working with potentially violent clients; enable students to recognize good versus bad procedures for responding to aggressive clients.

7. Teach validation procedures so students have a means for recognizing their own mistakes, and a means to differentiate between real world problems and projection of personal problems.

8. Facilitate students’ development of their own professional mission statements

9. Teach how to conduct and terminate the professional relationship so as to not lose the benefits achieved.

| Practicum/Internship | Department of Psychology | College of Humanities & Social Sciences |