CAPS Doctoral Internship Program (CDIP)

About the CAPS Doctoral Internship Program

The CAPS Doctoral Internship Program (CDIP) prepares the next generation of health service psychologists to serve as ethical and skilled clinicians in a variety of settings with high degrees of multicultural competence. Psychology interns completing their capstone training experiences work as generalists in a university counseling center that serves a large public university. Training at CAPS, which is housed within UArizona’s nationally ranked Campus Health Services, comes with ample and consistent opportunities to collaborate with staff across medical, health promotion, and mental health services within a large interdisciplinary center. CDIP was recently accredited by APPIC. We plan to have our first intern cohort in 2024!

Quick Links:

• Internship Admissions, Support, and Initial Placement Data
• CDIP Training Manual

About the Intern Role

At CAPS, we are proud of the rich variety of training experiences that we offer our interns. CDIP interns work on the front lines alongside CAPS staff providing a variety of intervention modalities in a fast-paced, vibrant atmosphere. They are trained in and/or exposed to theoretically driven and evidence-based interventions. Training staff value the development and integration of interns’ theoretical approaches as a centerpiece of training. Interns are exposed to through experience, didactics, and supervision to different theoretical approaches that include psychodynamic psychotherapy, ACT, DBT, and more. Training Activities include clinical supervision, 2 hours per week of didactic seminars, supervision of counseling externs (part-time trainees from MA or PhD programs), case consultation, and conference attendance. Additionally, each intern is placed for 5 hours per week at an Emphasis Site to serve a specific population of interest, such as Native American, African American Latinx, Asian/Pacific Islander, LGBTQ+, and neurodivergent students. Interns can also be placed with Athletics, the CAPS Assessment team, or with many other campus partners for their emphasis placement.

Our Values at CAPS

CDIP is built on values of justice, equity, and inclusion as we aim to serve the health needs of UArizona’s large and diverse campus community. Given our belief that diversity is a strength, we also strive to recruit a diverse array of interns and training staff from different cultural, personal, and academic backgrounds. We deeply value all trainees as critical parts of our team and we want to provide as rich of a training experience as possible. We firmly believe that there is reciprocal benefit between the training we provide and the interns who join us. As a training program, we are tasked with keeping up to date with research, best practice, and our own development as supervisors to facilitate excellent training experiences. Interns (and other trainees) bring fresh perspectives, diverse experiences, and new skill sets that broaden CAPS’ capacity to serve our students well.    

The CAPS Team

As a team, CAPS staff consists of psychologists, licensed professional counselors, associate-level counselors, licensed clinical social workers, administrative staff, clinical care coordinators, evaluation specialists, psychiatrists, nurse practitioners, doctoral interns, master’s level externs, doctoral psychology externs from the UArizona Clinical Psychology program, and graduate assistants. We are a large, dynamic, and fun team that is committed to serving the needs of our

community as best as we can. All of us are committed to making training an integral component of that aim and our doctoral internship is the centerpiece of our training program.    

Training Model

The CDIP model, and CAPS Training Program more broadly, adhere to a Developmental Practitioner Model. As such, we believe that training is a developmental model and it is our responsibility, to some degree, to meet trainees where they are developmentally to provide the best training. As an internship, CDIP is the capstone training experience for emerging psychologists who match with us. As advanced trainees with substantial training already behind them, interns do most of their learning and training through engaging in professional activities alongside a dedicated staff and with sufficient supervisory support. Experiential learning is the primary training mechanism through which interns learn. CDIP balances sufficient support with challenging interns in developing necessary skills and insights as they transition into their professional lives. Interns can expect to develop their professional identities and theoretical approaches as they prepare to launch into their careers.

CDIP training is primarily rooted in brief psychodynamic, multicultural, and ACT approaches to psychology. Interns engage in didactics and supervision largely from some form of integration of these frameworks, but additionally receive a diverse array of exposure to many different theories e.g., ACT, feminist approaches, Internal Family Systems, and more) and topics. As a priority, CDIP aims to facilitate interns’ development of their existing theoretic approaches throughout their internship year.

CDIP views training, and university mental health more broadly, as community efforts. While we are proud of our center and centralized team in our capacity to meet students’ needs who walk through our door at CAPS, we also work hard to establish connections with our campus partners to meaningfully reach students where they are more efficiently. CAPS Site-based services are growing every year as we aim to reach more of our campus community, particularly parts of it that have been historically underserved. CDIP is part of our efforts to provide resources to campus partners in our community. Early in the internship year, each intern identifies an “emphasis area,” - a unique 5/hr per week placement at a campus partner site – that represents a personalized, community-based component of each intern’s experience. The growing list of possible emphasis area sites include cultural centers, the SALT Center, UArizona Colleges, Athletics, the CAPS Assessment Team, and others

How to Apply

Application Deadline: December 3, 2023 @ 11:59pm

The UArizona CAPS Doctoral Internship currently offers 2 full-time internship positions. Students interested in applying for the internship program should submit an online application through the APPIC website (www.appic.org) using the APPIC Application for Psychology Internships (AAPI). As an APPIC-accredited site, we participate in “the match” through the National Matching Services for intern selection. Prospective interns must use our program code (#2594) when applying. The following materials must be submitted:

Required Application Materials

1. A completed online AAPI   
2. Cover letter (as part of AAPI)   
3. A current Curriculum Vitae (as part of AAPI)   
4. Three Standard Reference Forms, two of which must be from persons who have directly supervised your clinical work (as part of AAPI). Please submit no more than three SRFs.   
5. Official transcripts of all graduate coursework   

All applications will be reviewed by the CAPS Training Committee. Candidates whose applications are viewed favorably will be invited to participate in Zoom interviews. Consistent with guidelines set forth by APPIC and NMS, the CAPS Training Committee will finalize rankings of interviewed candidates after all interviews have been completed. All application materials must be received by the date noted in the current APPIC directory listing in order to be considered. 

Any and all questions about application procedures can be directed to the UArizona CAPS Training Director, Dr. Joel Gaffney (email: joelgaffney@arizona.edu; phone: 520 621 3334).

*** All interns who match to the UArizona CAPS Doctoral Internship must provide proof of citizenship or legal residency and must successfully pass a fingerprint-based background check before beginning employment. Interns also must provide results from a tuberculosis (TB) screening test from the previous 12-months. Instructions for providing this information or completing the background check and TB screening will be sent out to all who match after the match process is complete.