CONGRATULATIONS to our 2023-2024 doctoral internship class! We have 46 interns in the Nebraska Internship Consortium in Professional Psychology from Clinical, Counseling, and School Psychology programs located from across the United States. 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 make sure the administrative coordinator 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 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 as well as see all of the current post doc positions listed. Check out our Spotlight page to see what your fellow interns and the members of the NICPP faculty have been doing. 

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).

Please also read The Impact of Microaggressions - An Introductory Training , by Brea M. Banks, PhD.

Internship Requirements

  1. A minimum of 2,000 hours completed during a 12-month period (at least 50 working weeks), documented in monthly logs submitted to the NICPP administrative assistant. A minimum of 25% of hours (500) in face-to-face psychological services to patients and clients. A minimum of 2 hours per week in individual supervision.
  2. Two (2) Psychology Intern Evaluations, one midyear, one yearend, completed by the primary supervisor, with comments and signatures of the supervisor and the intern, and the signature of the UNL co-director. The evaluation form is found in the NICPP Intern Handbook. Interns need to average 4 or above in each area summary on their yearend evaluation to successfully complete internship.
    Competency Scale 1-6
    1 = Pre-internship/Deficient
    2 = Beginning Internship
    3 = Midyear Competency Minimum
    4 = Yearend Competency Minimum
    5 = Yearend Competent
    6 = Post-internship/Exceptional
    The competency scale of 1 to 6 is intended to represent the typical range and course of development during the internship year. It is expected that for most interns in most areas ratings will be between 2 and 5, 2-3 at the beginning of internship and moving, as competencies develop, to 3-4 at midyear and 4-5 at the conclusion of the internship. Supervisors are asked to explain specifically in the comments any ratings that fall in the 1-2 pre-internship/deficient and/or 5-6 post-internship/exceptional ranges of the scale.
  3. Three (3) Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS) forms, initial, midyear, and yearend, reviewed and signed by the intern, supervisor, and UNL co-director. At the beginning of the year, interns work with their supervisors to establish specific professional goals for their training year in the initial GAS form. Interns assess and score their progress on the goals at midyear and again at yearend, reviewing their progress with their supervisors. Goals may be revised as necessary.
  4. One (1) clinical case presentation at a Consortium seminar day.
  5. Two (2) site visit evaluations completed and submitted to the NICPP administrative coordinator.

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.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/search-directories-databases/publications . 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  https://www.aacap.org/aacap/Resources_for_Primary_Care/Practice_Parameters_and_Resource_Centers/Practice_Parameters.aspx .

We appreciate all those who share their expertise with us during our NICPP seminars. We particularly thank those who permit us to post their presentations:

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 .

Training Opportunities

  • Training opportunities will be posted here.
Post docs, etc are posted here as they come out: https://www.facebook.com/groups/94643200884

Research Participation Requests

  • Requests for intern participants in research surveys will be posted here.