CONGRATULATIONS to our 2011-2012 predoctoral internship class! We have 26 interns in the Nebraska Internship Consortium in Professional Psychology from Clinical, Counseling, and School Psychology programs located in 14 different states across the country. We are looking forward to working with all of you this year!

Email is our primary form of communication among our Consortium sites and between the sites and the NICPP administrative office located in the Educational Psychology Department of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Please be sure the administrative assistant, Allison Nespor, always has your current email address.

NICPP Website

Check the website frequently. It provides a number of valuable resources. Here you will find the most current versions of the intern handbook and the various forms you need to fill out throughout the year. We post seminar agendas, information on training opportunities, and invitations to social events. Check the calendar for seminar and site visit dates. We have also assembled some links to resources for evidence-based practice that you may find helpful. Join our Facebook group and share your thoughts on your NICPP internship experience. Check out our Spotlight page to see what your fellow interns and the members of the NICPP faculty have been doing. Look back at the internship year in the gallery.

NICPP Intern Handbook

The NICPP Intern Handbook provides a roadmap for your internship year. It tells you what we as a consortium do and why we do it. It lays out our expectations of you and what you can expect from us. Our policies and procedures and our ethical principles are found in its pages. You will also find examples of the forms you are expected to complete and turn in during the year to document your fulfillment of internship requirements. These requirements include setting goals for yourself (Goal Attainment Scale), putting in your hours of client contact and supervision (Intern Monthly Activity Log), attending consortium seminars, and visiting and learning about the variety of sites across the Consortium (Site Visit Evaluation).

Evidence-Based Practice

The NICPP espouses a scientist-practitioner approach to psychological practice within an ecological-developmental framework. A crucial part of our training philosophy is an emphasis on evidence-based practice. The American Psychological Association defines an "evidence-based practice" as one in which someone looks at the best available research and then combines that with his or her own expertise to develop a treatment that meets the unique needs of the client. We encourage interns to consult resources such as the Evidence-Based Behavioral-Practice website, which is dedicated to bridging the gap between behavioral health research and practice. American Psychiatric Association practice guidelines provide evidence-based recommendations for the assessment and treatment of psychiatric disorders. This page links to the complete text of all APA practice guidelines published on PsychiatryOnline, which provides additional tools and resources for each guideline: http://www.psych.org/MainMenu/PsychiatricPractice/PracticeGuidelines_1.aspx. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry has published over 30 Practice Parameters. The Parameters are published as Official Actions of the AACAP in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Links to the complete text of all published parameters are available at http://www.aacap.org/cs/root/member_information/practice_information/practice_parameters/practice_parameters. See also the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) Evidence-Based Mental Health Treatment for Children and Adolescents website.

Shane Lopez, Ph.D., Senior Scientist in Residence at Gallup and Research Director for the Clifton Strengths School, presented an NICPP seminar session on the topic of Positive Psychology. He kindly provided several articles on the importance of hope: Beyond the DSM-IV: Assumptions, Alternatives, and Alterations; Impact of Positive Psychological Capital on Employee Well-Being Over Time; and Longitudinal Effects of Hope on Depression and Anxiety: A Latent Variable Analysis.