Fulton State Hospital (FSH) and Westminster College have partnered to create a new, year-long internship for undergraduate students studying psychology at the college.
In the program, student interns can be placed in either the Guhleman Forensic Center or Biggs Forensic Center. They will be assigned to specific programs at the hospital including group therapy or individual therapy sessions and treatment meetings.
Marc Maddox, psychology director at FSH, and Ted Jaeger, chair of the Westminster department of psychology, developed the internship program over the course of about six months.
Jaeger said the hospital is working to provide undergraduates in this new internship program a comparable experience to the hospital's graduate internship program.
"It's kind of a trial balloon," Jaeger said. "The hospital has done lots of internship experiences like this with graduate students before but this is a new undertaking for them with undergraduate."
The year-long internship program officially launches in the fall. However, Maddox and Jaeger decided to let one student do a semester-long internship this spring to pilot the program. Jaeger said he thinks piloting the program this spring will be useful.
"This semester, there is - for the one and only time - a one-semester internship experience that's giving us a chance to see how this is going to work, figure out what are the optimal learning arrangements at the hospital and make sure from the psychology department here that the learning experiences are productive and can match to some extent with things that relate to our curriculum," Jaeger said.
Senior psychology major Melissa Buehner is the program's first intern. She started at the beginning of the school's semester last month.
"I am super excited about working with graduate students and professionals in an applied setting and creating an established relationship with Fulton State Hospital," Buehner said in a press release. "I am still trying to narrow my area of concentration since psychology is such a broad field."
Buehner also stated in the press release that she enjoys doing research and is hoping this internship will help her decide if she wants to focus more on the clinical or forensic side of psychology.
At Westminster, students need to be at least 21 years old and have senior status to participate in the program. Also, Jaeger said, students will get recognition for being selected as interns. He said there are a lot of "positive benefits" for students participating in the program.
"They'll get to know professionals in the mental health field out there who, down the road, might be able to write letters of recommendations for them," Jaeger said.
Currently, students apply for the program and will be selected by a committee comprised of two members of the college's psychology department, one of which is the department chair, and a person from FSH. Then, Jaeger said, "there is also a stage in the process that the hospital personnel has to be satisfied with the selection as well."
Up to two interns may be chosen each year and each will work 130 hours at FSH. Interns will receive three credit hours per semester through Westminster for their time at the hospital.
Westminster and FSH, Jaeger said, have collaborated for several years. For example, Jaeger said he has "sporadically employed" someone from the hospital to teach a course in his department.
"We have a course in forensic psychology, for example, that it's kind of a natural for someone from Fulton State Hospital to teach," Jaeger said.
He added that Westminster students have occasionally interned at FSH in the past. Westminster and FSH's relationship led to this new program, which Jaeger said will make that internship experience a more consistently available opportunity for students.
"We've never been very systematic about it (sending interns to FSH)," Jaeger said. "It dawned on me that maybe we could regularize this experience ... It would be a standing opportunity that we could count on."