Practicum

Practicum is offered twice a year, typically during Fall and Spring terms. Students who have a practicum in the Fall may continue into the Winter term, but typically, no new placements are started in the Winter.

You can set up practicum at a new site or you can contact a site that has previously had WOU students.  Here is a list of some past practicum sites:

Department of Human Services Child Welfare

Juliette’s House

Family Building Blocks

Polk Family Outreach

Central High School Counseling Office

Sable House

Marion Victims Assistance

Oregon Lottery Human Resources

Dallas School Psychologist

Oregon Child Development Coalition (OCDC)

Psychiatric Crisis Center

Center Hope and Safety

Polk County District Attorney Victims Assistance

WOU Human Resources

Marion County Crisis Child and Family Services

HOME

Jackson Street Youth

Mano a Mano

Henderson’s house

Trio at Chemeketa

Ash Creek Elementary

Catholic Community Services

Dallas High School

Yamhill Corrections

You will get academic credit for practicum, PSY 409. The amount of credit you sign up for determines the number of hours a week you need to complete at your site. Most students take it for 4 credits, 11 hours a week at the site.

If you are taking practicum for:

• 2 credits, you must have 6 hours per week at the site, 60 hours total
• 3 credits, you must have 9 hours per week at the site, 90 hours total
• 4 credits, you must have 11 hours per week at the site, 110 hours total
• 5 credits, you must have 14 hours per week at the site, 140 hours total
• 6 credits, you must have 17 hours per week at the site, 170 hours total
• 7 credits, you must have 20 hours per week at the site, 200 hours total
• 8 credits, you must have 23 hours per week at the site, 230 hours total

Most of the academic credit comes from the hours a week you are at your site. Additionally, you must attend the PSY 409 class (ONLINE class) that meets 3 times a term (typically Week 1, 5, and 10) on Tuesday from 5:30 to 7:30. These classes are mandatory for doing the practicum.

As a part of the PSY 409 class, you will:

• Submit a weekly time sheet and experience journal
• Complete site evaluation and summary
• Be evaluated by your site supervisor at mid-term and end of term; meet individually with Dr. Roscoe to review your evaluations at mid-term and end of term.

You take PSY 409 for academic credit and it is Pass/NC on your transcript

• Up to 4 credits of PSY 409 can count to the psychology major and the rest (if you do more than 4 credits) count to your 180. If you do more than 4 credits, you can have the additional credits count to a Behavioral Sciences Minor (See Dr. Roscoe for details)
• All credits will count to your 180 if you have already done PSY 411 Mentoring or have other applied credits like Teaching Assistant (TA) or Research Assistant (RA) counting to psychology electives already (4 credit max of “applied” credits)
• Students often take PSY 409 for 4 credits, so that is 110 hours across the 10-week term, 11 hours a week.
• You can take practicum across multiple terms at the same site or different site.

Expectation for the Supervisor at your Site:

• You must have a designated supervisor at your site who will oversee you and assign tasks
• You must have regular weekly contact with your supervisor
• Your supervisor needs to fill out an evaluation at mid-term and at the end of the term

Expectations for the Experience:

• The experience must provide meaningful experiences related to psychology (e.g., a special project, research, job shadowing, or sitting in on clients, etc.) A practicum should not be exclusively filing or non-psychology related tasks. Some can be expected, but the majority of your time needs to be meaningful experiences.
• Practicum experience may be paid under certain circumstances. Please talk with Dr. Roscoe.

Examples of tasks a practicum student might do:

• Supervised experience working with individuals and small groups in teaching, coaching, case management, and planning activities
• Shadowing therapy or other professional activities that a practicum student cannot solely perform
• Design and implement projects/programs
• Research/assessments of programs
• Participating in training for the agency
• Limited responsibilities for decision-making
• Application of professional knowledge
• Ideally, taking responsibility for one project from inception to completion

Part of the learning in practicum is finding and setting up a site. Dr. Roscoe will aid you in the process by giving you direction and feedback, but it is your responsibility to get the practicum established.

Look in the Google Folder of past practicum site descriptions. These files are descriptions of past practicum sites that students wrote while doing the practicum. Click on this link and it will take you to a google folder with all the documents (you must be logged into you WOU email to get access). There are often multiple files for the same site if we have had more than one student there. You can read them all to see what each person did, but the contact information may have changed since that person was at the site.

You can do a general internet search for community services. Your practicum site does not have to be at a place where a WOU student has been before. You can find your own new site, but allow for plenty of time as setting a new site can take longer.

When you get the “go ahead” to contact sites, Dr. Roscoe will give you any contact information she has for the sites you are interested in. She will also help you identify who the best contact person is if it is a new site. Dr. Roscoe will also make suggestions of other sites to consider based on your application answers and interests.

Please keep Dr. Roscoe informed on what site you are contacting and if you move to a second or third choice.

Start contact sites as SOON AS YOU GET THE OK, as this process can take a while and your site may have additional task such as a site visit, interview, or background check that need to be completed before approval.

It can be wise to start following up with your second choice if your first choice is taking a while to respond. Be transparent that you are talking to multiple sites, but keeping “another iron in the fire” could be good in case your first choice falls through.

Ideally, you want everything lined up and get your practicum proposal turned in to Dr. Roscoe by the due date of Wednesday of week 6. If you have been actively working with the site and the process (e.g., background check) is not complete by the proposal due date, let Dr. Roscoe know and you can get an extension on the proposals. Extensions will NOT be given to people who wait to contact sites and are now behind in the process.