Program students, in their final year, serve distant-station internships in School Psychology. Two “interns” are on their internships during the current  2006-2007 academic year. Internships in school psychology are one academic year and involve at least 1300 hours of supervised professional activity in a school setting. Both of our current students are doing internships in the northwest Louisiana area. Most interns work directly for school districts and some work for organizations that have contracts with school districts to provide school psychology services.

Interns generally are reimbursed at the rate of a beginning school psychologist within their school districts/employers. Interns must be supervised closely by NASP and State Certified School Psychologists. Internships generally provide exposure to the types of activities that licensed and certified school psychologists perform, but are introduced to those activities in a controlled and graded fashion.

Having served as the on-campus internship supervisor, I have been in the position to see the mid-year and final year ratings of all of our interns for the past several years, and I can testify that the program is turning out students with the skills needed in the workplace, as all of the students were rated as very strong interns. If the critical yardstick of quality of education is quality performance on the job, then the School Psychology Program at LSUS is doing a very good job. The performance during most recent 2005-2006 academic year is consistent with the feedback that the program routinely received from off-campus internship supervisors: Students who finish this program in good standing know what they need to know to succeed in the workplace.

Gary E. Jones, Ph.D., Intern Supervisor

Below is a list of recent locations for student internships 

• Bossier Parish Schools
• Caddo Parish Schools, Special Programs Center
• Texans Can, a charter school system for “at risk” high school students
• Webster Parish Schools
• Rapides Parish Schools
• Bossier Parish Schools