Clinical Psychology Training Program Named Outstanding

By Leila Ugincius

The Clinical Child/Adolescent Track of Virginia Commonwealth University’s clinical psychology doctoral program has won a top national award from the American Psychological Association.

The VCU program received the 2007 Outstanding Training Program in Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology award.

The award honors excellence in education programs that are committed to developmental training and evidence-based treatments for psychopathology in childhood and adolescence.

VCU’s program emphasizes both treatment and research, which was instrumental in its winning the award, said Michael A. Southam-Gerow, associate professor and head of the child/adolescent track.

“We train our students to be really good therapists – teaching treatments that are the most up-to-date and ones that work the best,” Southam-Gerow said. “We have a very strong faculty that’s doing research that’s very relevant in the current world.

“Our faculty are doing research that is focusing on topics of great importance in the field, such as violence prevention in adolescents,” he said. “We’re finding out what treatment for kids works best particularly for kids in urban, poorer neighborhoods – the kids who are most at risk.”

This is the third year that the APA— through its Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology division — has offered the award. Winning it is a coup that will help the clinical psychology department continue to attract top-notch students.

“It’s really good for us to get national recognition from national leaders in the field,” Southam-Gerow said. “It will help us fulfill VCU’s mission of having world-class training programs in our departments.”

The award will be presented during the APA’s 2007 Annual Convention in San Francisco in August.

Earlier this year, VCU’s doctoral programs in clinical psychology and counseling psychology were ranked in the top five nationally for faculty productivity in an index of graduate programs published in the “The Chronicle of Higher Education.”