Mission Statement and Training Model

The mission of the Student Counselling and Career Centre is to maximize the potential of all students to benefit from the academic environment of the university, and to contribute to the well-being and development of the university and community. This is achieved by providing professional leadership and innovative programming in personal, career, and academic counselling; training; research; consultation; and outreach.

Implicit in our mission statement is a belief that a wide range of programs and activities will be necessary to provide an environment conducive to student growth and development. As a consequence, the Student Counselling and Career Centre has a high profile and widespread involvement around the campus, offering a variety of clinical, educational, and developmental services to various constituent groups in our community.

The developmental emphasis that informs our work with students and the university at large also constitutes the core philosophy of our internship training program. We see our training program as the capstone to a doctoral psychology student’s professional training, building on the foundation of knowledge gathered from diverse experiences in practica and other applied settings, graduate coursework, and research. As a capstone program, a primary value is placed on the integration of knowledge and skills as a means to facilitate the development and consolidation of the intern’s identity as a professional psychologist.

To enhance the professional development of our interns, our training program is structured around an integrative developmental model grounded in a scientist-practitioner framework. This means that attention is paid both to the individual developmental needs of our interns as well as to the need for evidence-based psychological practice. Thus, a structured, sequential training approach, tailored to the individual needs of our interns, is employed throughout the training year. Exposure to didactic seminars, departmental research, program evaluation, and training in empirically-supported therapies combine with this to underscore the reciprocal interplay between science and practice in Psychology.