UCF psychology pre-doctoral internship program earns accreditation

Psychology majors now have one more reason to come to UCF — the Counseling Center’s Pre-Doctoral Internship Program in Professional Psychology is now officially accredited by the American Psychological Association.

Karen Hofmann, a licensed psychologist and associate director of the training program, said that the Counseling Center wanted to set a higher standard for the school and its program. Offering a pre-doctoral internship in psychology in addition to a master’s degree program gives more opportunities to their students.

“There’s no standard for a master’s degree other than accumulating enough hours,” Hofmann said. “The pre-doctoral internship in psychology is a lot more complicated, and there’s a nationalstructure.”

The APA holds aspiring programs to a complicated structure; its book of guidelines is 30-pages long. The actual application, according to APA’s official website, is a self study in which the program prepares a report that evaluates its goals and indicates that it meets accreditation standards. A site visit is set to ensure that everything in the self study was accurate. Then, a decision is made.

Hofmann, who began her job as associate director in 2006, helped the program become a member of the Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers in 2007. APPIC not only connected interns to the training program, but it provided a basis for their accreditation.

“APPIC is also an application process, it’s just not as rigorous as APA, so that gave us a good indication that we were on the right track and that everything was in place,” Hofmann said. “It was our first milestone.”

Read more about this internship here.