BCC provides a comprehensive series of training events, learning tasks, experiences and activities designed to help its interns develop their clinical skills and professionalism. The training program strives to provide a learning environment that allows interns to thrive and prosper in building on their existing knowledge, solidifying strengths, taking risks, and demonstrating achievement of all profession-wide and program-specific competencies. We also strive to provide a learning environment that allows interns to meaningfully explore professional, personal and spiritual issues (e.g., knowledge, values, self-awareness, etc.) that relate to their clinical functioning and professional development. With support, challenge, role modeling, and mentoring, we expect interns to grow into competent professional clinicians who will be well-prepared to practice as independent health service psychologists within a University or college counseling center and other treatment settings.
BCC considers the development of an interns' professionalism critical for making the transition from graduate psychology student into a professional health service psychologist. Professionalism includes elements such as self-awareness, humility, integrity, accountability, responsibility, effective communication with clients and colleagues, and collegial and collaborative professional relationships. It also includes personal maturity and emotional stability, the ability to balance multiple professional roles and responsibilities, multicultural competence, sound clinical and ethical judgment, as well as the integration of professional practice, scholarly inquiry and a Christian worldview.
Development of professionalism is facilitated through role modeling, mentoring relationships, supervision, collaboration, and didactic, observational, and experiential training. Interns are encouraged to engage in reflective practice and gain experience in self-assessment throughout the year. They are expected to demonstrate self-direction and abilities to monitor internal states and behaviors, reflect on their strengths and areas for growth, and attend to their own personal, professional and spiritual self-care. The structure of the training program encourages increasing levels of autonomy over the course of the internship, allowing interns to work more independently as their capabilities expand.
Didactic seminars and training modules conducted by BCC are designed to support the clinical responsibilities of trainees and to advance their conceptual and theoretical understanding of clinical work. Many seminars are case-oriented and emphasize a "hands on" approach to integrating theory with clinical practice. These seminars and training modules are organized by the Director of Internship Training, and provided by BCC full-time supervising and part-time/specialty supervising staff, as well as Rosemead clinical faculty. Outside professionals are also invited to present on areas of particular expertise and to provide interns with opportunities for reflective group processing.
The BCC Orientation is a structured four week program that starts when interns arrive at the beginning of August. It has a number of distinctive features that address and help facilitate each intern’s transition to a new environment and new roles. Orientation provides an opportunity for interns to interact, socialize, and begin to develop meaningful relationships with one another, and BCC staff, which often serve as important sources of support throughout the training year. Interns not only meet BCC clinical, supervisory and support staff and begin to develop relationships with their intern cohort, they are provided with an extensive introduction to the inner workings of the BCC and to Biola University. It includes a variety of team building exercises, trainings, tours, experiential activities, meet and greets, and social events.
Orientation activities also familiarize interns with some of the realities of working in a University counseling center and within a complex educational institution and campus community. Interns are provided with a copy of the Internship Training Manual to help acquaint them with the aims of our training program as well as their roles and responsibilities during internship. They also receive information about general BCC and University policies and procedures, campus resources, relevant documents and forms, and BCC technology.
Throughout Orientation there is significant time dedicated to discussing issues related to the interns' transition into the internship, recognizing stressors they may experience, and attending to self-care. Interns complete a wellness assessment, and set personal, spiritual and clinical training goals during Orientation. Supervision assignments seek to ensure intern training and personal/ professional development goals receive the best possible support and challenge as the training year progresses. Orientation focuses on laying the following foundations, among other topics:
This two hour group seminar meets every other week and provides lecture, discussion of professional literature and case examples, and experiential activities on a variety of clinical skills, therapeutic modalities, and other topics relevant to working in a University counseling center. Interns engage in discussions of current ethical issues and quandaries in clinical practice. Interns also explore their own interpersonal process, transference and countertransference that surface when working with clients, and the use of self in professional and therapeutic encounters.
This two hour monthly meeting provides interns with ongoing support and guidance for their outreach, consultation, and research activities through didactic and experiential training in primary and strengths-based prevention and campus drop-in consultation models; mental health advocacy and anti-stigma efforts; program evaluation; and identifying and assessing learning outcomes. Interns practice their presentation skills and receive feedback from supervisory staff and colleagues before implementing programming with targeted campus audiences. Interns also receive supervision for drop-in consultation activities and support for designing and implementing research or program evaluation projects during this time.
This group seminar meets for two hours more frequently in the beginning of the training year and less often as the year progresses. It offers didactic and experiential training focused on developing multicultural counseling competencies and skills for integrating spiritual facets of human experience into therapy. Lectures and interactive exercises focus on increasing interns' self-awareness of values and attitudes, knowledge of multiple intersecting personal, cultural and spiritual identities, and skills for culturally responsive, spiritually integrated assessment and intervention. Topics include, but are not limited to: worldview, faith and spirituality; racial and cultural identity; class and socioeconomic status; gender, sexual identity and sexual minority status; differential power, privileges, prejudice, access to resources, oppression, social justice, equity and inclusion.
The psychological testing training module meets every week for two hours. It begins with group didactic instruction and hands-on practice administering and scoring tests with volunteer clients and evolves into consulting about testing cases, reviewing choices of psychological tests, and analyzing test results, report writing and conducting effective client feedback sessions. Interns participate by bringing assessment cases, results and questions and by providing feedback to each other.
Interns meet as a group for 2 hours every other week to focus on personal and professional self-care and spiritual growth. Interns complete a self-care/wellness inventory and use their personalized results to target areas for growth or further development. Interns experience varied self-care and spiritual growth strategies, as well as mutual support and accountability. They are encouraged to explore, experiment with, reflect on, discuss, and incorporate any strategies they identify as useful for maintaining their own personal faith and professional wellness. This opportunity for experiential learning and self-reflection is mostly intern-led with some activities facilitated by the Internship Training Director.
Interns are invited and encouraged to participate in professional development activities. BCC provides funding to support these activities as well as for interns’ membership dues in professional associations and registration fees/travel expenses for other professional conferences (e.g. the California Psychological Association annual conference) approved by the Director of Internship Training.
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