InSPECT
I am pleased to announce a new funding opportunity for graduate students in the Ed.S. level School Psychology program. Project InSPECT: Integrated School Psychology Early Childhood Training, is made possible through the receipt of a United States Department of Education Pre-service Personnel Preparation Grant.
Project InSPECT is a four-year Ed.S. graduate degree program designed to prepare mental health professionals capable of providing state-of-the-art services to infants, toddlers, and young children and their families as collaborative members of community, home-based, and school teams. InSPECT trainees will complete all core school psychology classes and also will enroll in several extra early childhood specialty classes during the program, which will require one extra year of training. In addition, trainees must complete designated experiences that allow them to receive more concentrated practical experiences in early childhood settings. In exchange, trainees receive generous tuition stipends during three years of the program. This project builds upon an ongoing collaboration between the University of Denver and the University of Northern Colorado.
The practical experiences that would be expected as a Project InSPECT trainee are: 90 hours of mentorship the first year; 200 hours of clinic the second year that includes both a play clinic and a psycho-educational clinic rotation; 300 hours in a field practicum the third year that includes some rotations in early childhood settings; and a 1200-hour, paid internship the fourth year, half of which must involve early childhood service delivery. These sequenced supervised clinical experiences will be integrated with core coursework and will take place in home-based, community, medical, and school placements in both Denver and Weld counties. In addition, all trainees will be required to attend bi-monthly project meetings and one early childhood professional conference per year with reimbursement for travel. During the third summer in the program, trainees will be required to plan and co-present an early childhood professional development institute in collaboration with a community or faculty mentor.
If you are interested in applying as a Project InSPECT trainee, please complete the application (PDF) and return to Dr. Michelle Athanasiou at School of Applied Psychology and Counselor Education, University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, CO 80639 no later than February 15. I will contact those applicants accepted to the general Ed.S. program for telephone interviews shortly after UNC admissions are completed.
If you have any further questions please feel free to contact me. I look forward to sharing more information about the project.
Sincerely,
Michelle Athanasiou, Ph.D.