Internship & Training Opportunities
Pacific Lutheran University’s Counseling Center offers a 20-hour a week, unpaid internship that begins August 15th and ends May 31st. The PLU Counseling Center internship provides developing professionals the opportunity to work directly with a college student population.
Open To: Masters and doctoral level students. The internship serves as a “practicum” experience for MA-level interns, and is designed to meet requirements for “pre-internship” for doctoral level students that have completed the requisite training experiences.
Begin and End Dates: Internship begins August 15th, with two weeks intensive on-boarding before seeing clients. Internship ends May 31st.
Population: The PLU Counseling Center provides direct IN-PERSON service to currently enrolled college students with a wide array of presenting concerns, ranging from identity exploration, loss of romantic relationships and roommate conflicts, to serious mental illnesses. Students represent their diverse communities and interns will work with individuals across sexual orientation, gender, age, SES, cultural, and other spectra.
The Counseling Center provides brief therapy (an Initial Treatment Planning Session and up to 8 sessions). Interns are given the option of providing long-term clinical care for up to two (2) students.
Supervision: Interns meet 1.5-hours a week with a primary supervisor, a half-hour a week with a secondary supervisor to focus on building diagnostic skills, 1-hour a week with a fellow intern and rotating clinical staff in internship seminar, and 1-hour a week for group supervision with the entire clinical team.
Duties: Interns accumulate significant direct clinical hours through intake and ongoing individual therapy with students, co-facilitate workshops with a supervisor, design and implement a campus outreach event, participate in campus mental-health trainings, complete a self-chosen internship project, participate in staff meetings and scheduled supervisions. As a part of PLU Counseling Center charting, interns, in consultation with their supervisors, assign diagnoses. For interns from programs that allow such training experiences, in the second-half of the training year, interns may participate in providing walk-in, triage, and emergent care with careful supervision.
Requirements: All PLU Counseling Center trainees and staff must provide proof of vaccination under guidance from the state of Washington. Interns must have reliable transportation and be available for 20-working hours a week. Interns must be available to attend case consultation and staff meetings weekly on Thursdays from 11:00am to 1:30pm.
We have a rolling application process, with applications accepted beginning in December for Fall 2022 academic-year placement. Applications are accepted until our two positions are filled.
To apply, fax or email:
- A cover-letter detailing your desire to contribute to our work with students here at PLU.
- A resume/CV.
- Three (3) written references.
Fax: (253) 536-5124
To: PLU Counseling Center
Attention: Dr. Elizabeth Barton, Director
Email: bartonla@plu.edu or counseling@plu.edu
Alternatively, mail items to:
PLU Counseling Center
Attention: Dr. Elizabeth Barton, Director
Tacoma, WA 98447-0003
Questions? Phone: (253) 535-7206