The Chicago Model of Education

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

The Chicago School Model of Education: Preparing Engaged Professionals Steering Committee Deane M. Rabe, Psy.D. Associate Vice President, Engagement and Student Affairs Chair Michael Barr, Ph.D. Director, Executive and Professional Education Online Campus Working Group Facilitator Traci Cihon, Ph.D. Program Faculty, Applied Behavior Analysis Applied Behavior Analysis Working Group Facilitator Ellis Copeland, Ph.D. Dean, Academic Affairs Cabinet Extended Team Representative Ken Fogel, Psy.D. Program Faculty, Clinical Psychology Clinical Psychology Working Group Two Facilitator Bianka Hardin, Psy.D. Associate Chair, Clinical Psychology Clinical Psychology Working Group One Facilitator Michelle Hoy-Watkins, Psy.D. Associate Chair, Clinical Forensic Psychology Forensic Psychology Working Group Facilitator Katia Mitova, Ph.D. Manager, Academic Support Center Academic Development Working Group Facilitator Nancy Newton, Ph.D. Program Faculty, Business Psychology Business Psychology Working Group Facilitator Virginia G. Qui単onez, Psy.D. Chair, Clinical Counseling Cabinet Extended Team Representative Sandra Siegel, Psy.D., L.C.P.C., R.N. Program Faculty, Clinical Counseling Psychology Clinical Counseling Working Group Facilitator Marla Vannucci, Ph.D. Director, Clinical Services Engagement and Student Affairs Working Group Facilitator James Walsh, Ph.D. Chair, School Psychology School Psychology Working Group Facilitator

ii

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Contributors Judy Beaupre, M.S. Director, Institutional Publications Executive Summary and Preparing Engaged-Professionals Nancy Davis, Ph.D. Associate Vice President, Academic Affairs Process Design and Working Group Facilitation Training Thomas Farmer, Psy.D. Post-Doctoral Fellow, Academic Community Leadership Aspirations Amanda Kim, Ph.D. Director, Center for Multicultural and Diversity Studies Multicultural Competence Exploratory Study: Key Findings and Recommendations Kelli Langdon, B.A. Creative Services Manager Project Logo John Moye, Ph.D. Director, Academic Development Assessment of Student Learning Outcomes Matt Nehmer, M.A. Director, Communications and Public Relations Introduction Kathryn Talley, Ph.D. Director, Institutional Research Institutional Effectiveness

iii

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Table of Contents Preface: From Boulder to Vail to Chicago.........................................................................................................................................1 Introduction: Defining the Next Model of Professional Education .....................................................................................................2 Executive Summary: The Chicago School Model of Education ........................................................................................................5 Preparing Engaged Professionals.....................................................................................................................................................6 Next Steps.......................................................................................................................................................................................11 Appendices I: The Chicago School Model of Education Framework .........................................................................................................15 II: Resource Guide: Institutional Values .................................................................................................................................16 III: Resource Guide: Institutional Learning Goals ...................................................................................................................17 IV: Resource Guide: Highlight Actualities...............................................................................................................................18 V: The Value of Education......................................................................................................................................................19 VI: The Value of Innovation ....................................................................................................................................................22 VII: The Value of Community..................................................................................................................................................28 VIII: The Value of Service.......................................................................................................................................................32 IX: The Learning Goal of Professional Practice......................................................................................................................36 X: The Learning Goal of Scholarship......................................................................................................................................40 XI: The Learning Goal of Diversity..........................................................................................................................................44 XII: The Learning Goal of Professional Behavior ...................................................................................................................49 XIII: Assessment of Student Learning Outcomes...................................................................................................................52 XIV: Assessment of Institutional Effectiveness.......................................................................................................................55 XV: Aspirations .......................................................................................................................................................................59 XVI: Multicultural Competence Exploratory Study: Key Findings and Recommendations .....................................................63

iv

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Preface From Boulder to Vail to Chicago The Chicago School Model represents a newly defined approach to professional education, an approach that builds upon—yet differentiates itself from—two earlier training models created to prepare psychologists.

The Boulder (Scientist–Practitioner) Model (1949): Developed in response to post-World War II treatment needs, this model seeks to establish the legitimacy of psychology as a recognized science. Its emphasis is on classic, quantitative research as the foundation for—and beneficiary of—scientific practice and the primary means to explain psychological phenomena, validate treatment outcomes, and develop theory and assessment instruments.

The Vail (Practitioner–Scholar) Model (1973): This model gave birth to the Doctor of Psychology (Psy.D.) degree and its emphasis on training clinical practitioners to effectively provide traditional psychological services to the benefit of individuals, families, and groups. While research remains a critical piece of this educational approach, it is differentiated by a broadened range of investigative approaches and a greater emphasis on application in real-world settings.

The Chicago (Engaged–Professional) Model (2009): In response to increasingly diverse and complex societal needs, this model incorporates a commitment to community engagement and social change at the systems-level. The Chicago School Model innovatively expands the application of—and reaches beyond—psychology to other professions that can play integral roles in transforming lives, organizations, and communities. It combines an emphasis on preparing professionally competent and culturally sophisticated practitioners whose work is supported by empirical validation, with a responsibility for achieving significant and lasting change.

The three models are interconnected, as illustrated by the continuous line in the project’s logo. Collectively, they demonstrate the legitimacy of psychology as a science, apply it in the real world to better people’s lives, and innovate ways of expanding the reach of the field to make a profound impact within the global community.

1

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Introduction Defining the Next Model of Professional Education The story of The Chicago School Model of Education begins not in 2008, when efforts arose in earnest to articulate an innovative and novel approach to psychology education, but in 1949—a full three decades before the school itself was founded. The story doesn’t even begin in Chicago, but in Colorado at the Boulder Conference on Graduate Education in Clinical Psychology. It was at this forum where the tenets of a training model emerged—or at least were documented for the first time. Referred to by some as the Boulder Model, by others as the Scientist–Practitioner Model, it was rooted in a classic academic research style. To develop into a practicing psychologist, the road from Boulder led one to first become a research scientist, usually with a specialty—psychology, counseling, clinical, etc.—and then into the field, typically through on-the-job training.

Sixty years later, the Boulder approach is still recognized. At hundreds of colleges and universities across the nation, a similar course is taken by students of the profession. They walk side by side in academic halls not with practitioner faculty, but with research scientists. The psychology vocation, however, has evolved over the past half century with new applications materializing. The subject is as popular as ever—consistently ranking in the top five of the most commonly declared majors—but with a growing number of students seeking more training devoted to the practitioner end of the spectrum.

Again, Colorado is the setting for this next chapter of the story. The year is 1973, fitting as The Bob Newhart Show is just reaching the airwaves, featuring television’s most recognizable fictional psychologist. At the Vail Conference on Professional Training in Psychology, a new approach to training emerges: the Practitioner–Scholar Model. Here, scientific research gives way to practice as the model’s nucleus. Vail started a chain of events that reverberates today. The creation of the National Council of Schools and Programs of Professional Psychology (NCSPP) would follow, and with it, a recognized approach to professional psychology education. By the end of the decade, professional graduate schools committed to granting the practitioner-based Psy.D. degree were becoming more common. One such graduate school, organized by a band of practicing psychologists, would start in 1979 and eventually become the largest of its kind in the nation. Considered names included the Great Lakes School of Professional Psychology and the thankfully passed over Lincoln Land School of Professional Psychology. The name “The Chicago School” would eventually win.

It took 24 years for Boulder to eventually lead to Vail. Now 36 years after Vail, the profession continues to progress. The Chicago School was founded on training principles set forth by NCSPP, inspired by Vail, but it too has changed. Psychologists have a more assorted range of career options than in the 1970s. The Chicago School has taken great effort, particularly over the past decade, to stay on the forefront of these transformations with a committed focus on innovation. The result has created new ways to meet the growing demand for psychology professionals to provide services for individuals, organizations, and the community.

For the first quarter century of its history, one seeking insight into The Chicago School’s approach to psychology training was likely pointed to the school’s mission statement; in particular, the language that spoke of The Chicago School’s pioneering curriculum, which emphasized diversity and multiculturalism. While central to an institution’s DNA, a mission statement, by design, is not meant to be detailed. Over the last five years, the President’s Cabinet has led an initiative to provide more clarity for what it means to teach, work, and learn at The Chicago School. The school’s 2006–2011 strategic plan articulated a vision to be the “school of choice” in professional psychology. It was followed by a formalized documentation of a teaching philosophy and a learning assessment model centered on scholarship, diversity, professional behavior, and professional practice, and a more detailed “Commitment to Diversity” statement. Finally, the symbolism of the four interlocked rings—a fixture of The Chicago School’s graphic identity—were named “education,” “innovation,” “service,” and “community.” These four words would become recognized shorthand for the school’s values.

What began as a one-sentence mission statement now had several satellites. Organically shaped and broader in scope, it now became necessary to assure that the model of education was shared and understood by all. President Michael Horowitz approached this challenge by issuing an Institutional Goal for 2008–2009 to articulate The Chicago School Model of Education.

The idea was to create something ambitious: a roadmap that shows not just how The Chicago School community pursues education, but why they take this course and exactly how it can be measured. The plan’s gestation would span the course of a year.

Keeping with The Chicago School tradition, this exercise would be conducted transparently, conscripting community members across all campuses. This approach was used to great effect in 2006 for the school’s HLC Self-Study for reaccreditation, and

2

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

again in 2007 for the President and Chairman’s Task Force on Scope and Mission. The latter application was acutely important because it set events in motion for The Chicago School to build new campuses on both coasts.

In this case, the initiative was led by a Steering Committee under Dr. Deane Rabe, Associate Vice President of Engagement and Student Affairs, with “Phase I” beginning in summer 2008. It was then when working groups from every academic department and teams from the areas of academic development and engagement and student affairs convened to examine the values and learning goals. Each group used a uniform model framework (see Appendix I) and was equipped with a set of common facilitation questions, known as the “A+ Probes,” which called on participants to share “assumptions,” “attitudes,” “actualities,” and “aspirations” for each value and goal, all the while asking what is “absent” from the discussion. The goal was to craft language that describes a clear and consistent community engaged approach to graduate psychology education. The initiative took on its own motto: “From Boulder to Vail to Chicago.” A graphic identity was created and emblazoned on coffee mugs given to all faculty and staff.

By October 2008, the ten working groups had submitted their summaries to the Steering Committee, which comprised of the group facilitators and the original architects of the model’s framework. By sifting through each working group’s report, the Steering Committee began “Phase II”—discovering alignments in values, definitions, and beliefs, and using a common language to mold the model. A draft was ready by January 2009 and a lengthy review began.

Upon Dr. Horowitz’s request, the Cabinet Extended Team (CET), comprised of the Associate Vice Presidents—Magdalen Kellogg (Enrollment Services), Dina Schenk (Marketing), James Campbell (Finance), Susan Craig (Human Resources), Dr. Nancy Davis (Academic Affairs), and Mark Williams (Institutional Advancement)—and representatives Drs. Ellis Copeland (Dean, Academic Affairs–Chicago Campus) and Virginia Quiñonez (Department Chair, Clinical Counseling Psychology–Chicago Campus), reviewed all the data collected by the Steering Committee to identify implications for The Chicago School Education System’s mission statement. Following a lively discussion, the CET concluded that: 1) The institutional values and learning goals were still valid; 2) The process helped clarify and strengthen the academic mission of the organization; and most importantly, 3) The Chicago School Model of Education is not limited to graduate psychology. Rather, it is a model of professional education that can be used to expand the reach of other applied disciplines.

Upon reviewing the elements that the CET recommended for consideration, the President’s Cabinet, in consultation with the Board of Trustees’ Chair, crafted a mission statement for The Chicago School Education System, a newly formed umbrella entity under which the School of Professional Psychology now resides. It elegantly reads: The Chicago School Education System Prepares Innovative, Engaged, Purposeful Agents of Change Who Serve Our Global Community This statement was presented to the Academic Affairs Committee of the Board of Trustees on April 22, 2009, and was approved by the full Board of Trustees on May 15, 2009, at the Downtown Los Angeles Campus—ironically, more than 2,000 miles from the school’s Chicago headquarters.

Ratification of the educational model itself continued, as groups such as the President’s Cabinet, The Chicago School Model of Education Steering Committee and Contributors, the Academic Affairs Department Committee, the Department Chairs and Lead Faculty, Faculty Council, Alumni Council, The Chicago School Student Association, and external partner representatives were systematically canvassed for reaction, challenges, validation, and reality checks. Their feedback was heard, changes were incorporated, and the present document was codified for full public consumption.

Of course, plans are just words on a page unless there is implementation. Installation of the model begins in Fall 2009 and will serve as a guiding compass for all future education rooted at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology and The Chicago School Education System affiliates. It will inform curriculum, learning goals, co-curricular activities, future institutional priorities, hiring standards and performance goals, partnership pursuits, and how The Chicago School will be positioned in the marketplace. The model’s mechanics are outlined in greater detail in the following chapters and appendices.

“Make no little plans,” was the creed of iconic architect Daniel Burnham, the chief conceiver of the 1893 Columbia Exposition and the current layout of the city of Chicago. In many ways, The Chicago School has adopted this motto. The attitude throughout the process of articulating The Chicago School Model of Education has been that if done right, and backed by a genuine reflection of the values and learning goals of the academic community—one that has elevated The Chicago School to become a world leader

3

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

in professional psychology education—has the potential to move the needle not just of psychology but of professional education overall. It is not a stretch to state that the results are six decades in the making. The following pages continue a story that began in Boulder in 1949, entered its second act in Vail, and now opens a new chapter at The Chicago School.

4

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Executive Summary The Chicago School Model of Education The Chicago School Model of Education is rooted in the belief that professional education has advanced far beyond the traditional classroom, research laboratory, and teaching clinic, and that its relevance and potential impact can be found in every part of life, every type of workplace, and every sector of society. It redefines the role of the professional; no longer limited to study and/or practice, the “engaged professional” is an integral part of the community and applies scholarship and the evergrowing myriad of applications that can be used to solve pressing social issues, strengthen families and organizations, and build capacity. Finally, The Chicago School Model of Education sets forth a new approach to teaching a particular discipline, an approach grounded in four institutional values (education, innovation, service, and community) and learning goals (professional practice, scholarship, diversity, and professional behavior).

While these values and goals provide a framework for The Chicago School Model, three meta-themes emerge in what the school does and why it chooses to do it: 1.

Pluralism: The commitment to diversity that defines The Chicago School underlies the focus on cultural proficiency that is infused into every program, every course, and every co-curricular experience. Pluralism is embraced as a fundamental tenet that advances self-reflection, inclusion, and social justice, and is progressively understood in terms that extend beyond traditional categories of difference commonly isolated in categories of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, religion and spirituality, national origin, and disability.

2.

Engaged Practice and Scholarship: Hands-on application of classroom learning and scholarship in real-world settings is central to The Chicago School Model. Such experiences begin early in the student’s education and continue throughout—building in intensity and degree of responsibility—giving the student an unparalleled range of opportunities to implement and evaluate evidence-based practices, hone professional skills, interact with the local and global community, and function as a powerful agent of change.

3.

Impact: The Chicago School Model is both responsive to and proactive in identifying the evolving needs of society.

Programs are created, revised, and implemented to fulfill market needs and address issues confronting individuals, organizations, communities, and the world through community engagement. Collaborative learning relationships are intentional, mutually beneficial, and result in the transformation of students and faculty as well as the people, organizations, and communities served.

“Engaged professionals” are neither the scientist–practitioners nor practitioner–scholars who came before; they are multiculturally and professionally proficient individuals who are integral parts of their communities; approach practice and scholarship from the broader view of innovators, transformers, and problem solvers; and use their disciplines to make positive and lasting impacts on the world.

5

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Preparing Engaged Professionals The Chicago School Model of Education can best be envisioned as a lattice of learning. Built on four core values—education, innovation, service, and community—and delivered through a framework in which each value intersects with four learning goals—professional practice, scholarship, diversity, and professional behavior—The Chicago Model is the architecture for preparing the newest breed of practicing professionals. The engaged professional is one whose career aspirations go beyond the effective application of theory and skills to include a commitment to change: to transforming lives; building capacity; and solving pressing individual, organizational, and social issues.

Flexibility and adaptability are key characteristics of The Chicago Model. While significant thought has gone into the development of curriculum and pedagogy that integrate the values and goals in each educational experience, faculty members are continually rethinking the way in which their disciplines are taught in order to incorporate new, more current, and more relevant experiences that enrich the quality of student learning.

The model can best be explained by examining it from eight perspectives: the four values and the four learning goals. The dynamic synergies that emerge as the eight are continuously rewoven and intertwined with content and teaching methodologies produce an approach that stands alone not only in its ability to prepare many of the world’s most capable and compassionate professionals, but also in its vision of achieving positive and lasting change.

The descriptions below offer a broad overview of how each element is manifested in curricular and co-curricular activities, and how each intersects with other elements to ensure that the education provided is integrated, comprehensive, and consistently aligned with the values and goals that are integral to the model. While only a few concrete examples are included in the following summaries, more comprehensive descriptions of the individual elements and the ways in which they are implemented are included in the appendices.

The Four Values The Value of Education For students, a Chicago School education represents the first phase in a lifelong pursuit of professional excellence; it is an education built on the integration of theory and exemplary practice, designed to fill market needs with highly qualified, ethical practitioners intent on making a difference. As with any academic pursuit, the measure of a Chicago School education lies in the competence of its faculty, all of whom are skilled practitioners, educators, and contributors to the body of knowledge that underlies their respective areas of expertise, and who also share a commitment to preparing the next generation of exemplary professionals.

The education value’s integration with professional practice is inherent in the extensive use of hands-on learning, a proven pedagogy that the engaged–professional model brings with it from the practitioner–scholar model; through a variety of increasingly intensive field experiences, students put theory into real-time practice, delivering services under the supervision of seasoned professionals. Additionally, all faculty members are practitioners in the field, ensuring that students are continually exposed to examples that demonstrate and reinforce theories taught in the classroom.

A comprehensive diversity-infused curriculum provides the foundation for each course in every program, instilling in all students the multicultural awareness, sensitivity, and proficiency to accommodate individual needs in the delivery of services. It is expected that all graduates will have developed a level of cultural sensitivity and competence that will prepare them to deliver services tailored to individual, organizational, and community needs.

The Value of Innovation The willingness—and indeed the commitment—to continuously move forward is a defining characteristic of The Chicago School Model. A shared understanding that we live in an ever-changing environment has engendered a curriculum and a pedagogy that continue to evolve as needs are identified and new applications crafted to expand the reach of our disciplines. The Chicago School believes that institutional agility and the capacity for adaptation are at the heart of our potential to bring about meaningful change; in seeking opportunities for innovation, the school relies on both organic and institution-driven initiatives to create a model of education that deftly blends novelty with tradition.

6

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

A commitment to innovation is explicit in The Chicago School’s decision to add professional behavior along with diversity to the learning goals of professional practice and scholarship fundamental to the practitioner–scholar model. Program faculty members support the premise that a student’s professional comportment, both in the class and in the field, is as critical a factor in professional preparation as content mastery. To that end, a Faculty Council task force recently articulated the definition of “professional comportment” across all programs and created a unique means by which this goal can be systematically evaluated.

Innovation meets scholarship as forensic psychology students learn Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, an empirically-validated intervention used to reunite and strengthen troubled families. Under the supervision of faculty, students use an ear-bug system to counsel parents (observed through a one-way mirror) through the process of mastering positive communication and discipline strategies with their children. The result is a unique opportunity for students to learn a specialized therapy, collect data to add to the growing base of knowledge that supports this evidence-based treatment, and make a significant difference in the lives of children and parents involved in abuse and neglect situations.

The Value of Community It is through this value that the engaged professional truly comes to life, and is differentiated from the practitioner–scholar and/or from professionals trained by other models of education. The notion of community focuses on the role that each individual— student, faculty, staff, or alumnus—plays in a larger milieu, and on the mutual benefits that the resulting interactions produce. At the most fundamental level, the “core community” serves as a base for learning. The intrinsic sense of community that characterizes classroom and co-curricular experiences provides faculty with ample opportunity to model practice and behavior, to create an environment built on mutual respect and collaboration, and to promote the inclusive, pluralistic philosophy that lies at the heart of The Chicago School mission. In the larger context, community defines the ultimate beneficiaries of disciplines taught and the services rendered. This is a definition that has evolved over time: once identified as local, our community has extended its reach globally; through an ever-expanding range of programs and services, the school seeks to bring about lasting positive change throughout the United States and in countries around the world.

The Center for Latino Mental Health was created to address the pressing need for culturally competent psychological services for Chicago’s rapidly growing Latino/a population. It serves as a vivid example of the intersection of community and diversity, providing students with real-world experience in tailoring services for individuals who historically have viewed mental health care with skepticism, fear, and a lack of understanding.

Alumni represent a critical segment of The Chicago School community. By serving as mentors, guest lecturers, advisory board members, and practicum supervisors, they successfully reinforce lessons learned in the classroom, provide valuable connections between school and community, and demonstrate through example the critical role that professional behavior plays in the life of a practitioner.

The Value of Service By applying their skills in a wide variety of community settings, Chicago School students fill a myriad of unmet needs. They take on professional roles in schools, hospitals, nonprofit organizations, and businesses, frequently providing services that would not otherwise be available to the organizations or the clients involved. Working collaboratively with partner agencies, they go beyond the provision of direct service and help build capacity, enabling the organization to become increasingly self-sufficient. In doing so, students embrace the value of service as a centerpiece of their life goals, and develop a sense of personal, social, civic, and global responsibility that will long outlive their days as graduate students.

Students in all programs complete practica, internship opportunities, and/or applied research projects through which they actively apply what they have learned in real-world settings. The benefits are reciprocal; students develop and hone professional practice skills, which increase their readiness for and competitiveness in the marketplace; at the same time, tremendous value is added to the partnering organizations and the clients they serve. At the Children’s Advocacy Center, for example, students work with victims of sexual abuse and function as advocates in court proceedings; in another example, clinical psychology students at Georgemiller, Whyte & Associates perform high-stake neuropsychological testing to evaluate airline pilots’ fitness for duty.

Using an inclusive definition of scholarship, one that broadens Ernest Boyer’s already-expanded definition, The Chicago School actively involves students in community-based research projects. These initiatives are far more than research for research’s sake; they seek to assist community organizations in evaluating and fine-tuning services that benefit their clients, thereby increasing the impact that can be realized from a partnership with Chicago School students and faculty. Recent examples

7

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

include a student-run evaluation of an Erie Neighborhood House program seeking to improve self-esteem and academic motivation in Latino teens, and a faculty-initiated project that used brain imaging technology to measure the effect that painting and drawing had on patients in a therapeutic setting.

The Four Learning Goals The Learning Goal of Professional Practice Regarding themselves as gatekeepers to the professions, Chicago School faculty members establish and maintain rigorous standards for academic work and professional practice experiences. Their intention is to produce engaged practitioners of only the highest quality who are competent, compassionate, ethical, and socially responsible. The Chicago School actively recruits faculty who are both master educators and skilled practitioners so that they can fulfill modeling and mentoring roles inside and outside the classroom. Always willing to challenge traditional assumptions and existing limitations of the professions, The Chicago School continually seeks new applications that can expand the reach of disciplines, as well as creative ways of engaging new populations and solving emerging problems. The breadth and depth of real-world experiences that students receive—far greater than at other professional schools—provide them with robust resumes with which to successfully embark on their careers.

Innovation is woven seamlessly into the learning goal of professional practice at Garfield Park Preparatory Academy (GPPA), a contract school established under the Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS) Renaissance 2010 initiative. Here, students in the Applied Behavior Analysis program work under the supervision of Board-Certified Behavior Analysts in using ABA techniques to dramatically improve the academic performance of all children, including those who are economically and educationally disadvantaged. As the only Chicago public school with an entire curriculum built on ABA principles, GPPA is unique both in its role within CPS and in the opportunity it offers Chicago School students to apply techniques learned in the classroom.

As the practice arm of the Forensic Psychology Department, The Chicago School Forensic Center brings students together with local organizations on projects that bolster hands-on learning experiences while addressing unmet needs in the community.

Students benefit from the opportunity to put classroom instruction into practice in real-world settings that range from the Juvenile Probation and Court Services Department to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services to women’s shelters and programs for ex-offenders.

The Learning Goal of Scholarship Engaged scholars embrace a broad definition of research in an ongoing quest to expand the impact that their disciplines can have in real-world settings. Because the application of learning is a key component of a Chicago School education, traditional research methodologies are replicated into an evidence-based approach to practice. Faculty model rigor, quality, relevance, and impact in their own research and seek to engage their students in the recursive interplay between scholarship and practice.

While The Chicago School Model welcomes divergent perspectives including the scholarship of discovery, integration, application, and teaching, its primary intent is to use scholarship as a means of solving problems that individuals, organizations, and communities face.

A focus on scholarship permeates the process of education. To instill a strong knowledge of how to consume and contribute to the literature, all students are engaged in research, both in class and in the field. An annual Dissertation Day provides Clinical Psy.D. students with a forum for presenting their research, and students in all programs have opportunities to display posters or present original research at professional conferences. The Center for Academic Excellence sponsors a Socratic Roundtable to give students a forum for scholarly dialogue and discussion.

Students have ample opportunities to work directly with faculty on cutting-edge research that benefits the community, both locally and globally. While the doctoral programs encourage applied and relevant dissertations that respond to the needs of community organizations, online programs specifically require students to apply classroom learning directly to their current workplace. An annual Cultural Impact Conference draws professionals from the Chicago area and beyond to present, participate in, and listen to reports of cutting-edge research that targets real-world community needs.

8

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

The Learning Goal of Diversity A commitment to multiculturalism—and to pluralism in the larger sense—is a defining characteristic of The Chicago School Model. It is a focus that is evident throughout the educational process; the faculty seeks to infuse it into every course, every cocurricular activity, and every field experience. Evidence of its critical role can be seen directly in the activities of the Center for Multicultural and Diversity Studies, which sponsors a colloquium series focused on diversity and which worked with the Office of Applied Professional Practice to ensure that practicum and internship opportunities reflect the school’s pluralistic philosophy. The Center for Multicultural and Diversity Studies also provides consulting, guidance, and feedback across academic programs to foster a critical understanding of the ways diversity is taught, learned, and experienced at The Chicago School. A recognized leader in diversity education and training, the school seeks innovative ways to instill multicultural competence and sensitivity in students, and to stay on the cutting edge of understanding and addressing the needs of an increasingly diverse world.

The interdependence between diversity and innovation is recognized, highly valued, and actualized at The Chicago School. Cocurricular programming provides opportunities for students to work across disciplines to explore the implications of diverse values and lifestyles. A Book of the Year, selected by a broad-based institutional committee for its focus on cultural challenges or diversity issues, functions as the impetus for a year-long series of activities and discussions.

The Center for International Studies offers a variety of service-learning opportunities that involve students in direct service activities while increasing their understanding of global ethnic conflict, international human rights, global justice, international relations, diplomacy, and other cultural issues. For example, students have traveled to Sri Lanka, where they helped train native lay counselors to deal with the psychological ramifications of ongoing civil war, natural disaster, and poverty.

The Learning Goal of Professional Behavior Faculty members express a deep sense of obligation to protect the public, the field, the reputation of the school, and the integrity of the degrees it confers. Consequently, they place as much emphasis on their students’ professional comportment as they do on their academic performance. Ethics is an area that demands particular focus as faculty share the belief that consistent ethical behavior is a key characteristic of the engaged professional. The Chicago School sets rigorous professional behavior standards and, acknowledging that the most effective means of teaching is through mentoring and modeling, faculty hold themselves as well as their students to these standards. As both professors and practitioners, they “live the model” in the classroom and in the community—they are engaged, inclusive, and compassionate; they embrace diversity, advocate for social justice, encourage lifelong learning, and are determined to make a difference in the lives they touch.

Professional behavior is infused throughout education and is integrated into coursework, field experiences, and co-curricular activities. The Center for Academic Excellence complements classroom instruction by providing a wide range of services designed to increase success in the academic world as well as effectiveness in professional life. Incoming students benefit from an Academic Focus Program that prepares them for the demands of graduate-level study while the Academic Support Center offers in-depth support in professional writing—including mastery of APA (American Psychological Association) style that is the standard for publication in the field—as well as study skills, critical thinking, oral communication, and time management.

Community service activities—whether projects of student organizations or delivered under the auspices of the Office for Community Partnerships—serve as examples of professional behavior’s intersection with the value of service. The student-run Social Justice Group seeks to educate members, classmates, and colleagues on issues of injustice and to explore the contributions that professionals can make in countering racism, classism, sexism, prejudice, economic exploitation, and relations of dominance. The group has taken on issues that range from coercive interrogations to ethical considerations in the PalestinianIsraeli conflict.

For each example offered above, a dozen others exist; more opportunities are created each semester as new faculty are hired, new partners identified, and new social issues emerge. By no means a rigid structure of content and pedagogy, The Chicago School Model of Education is intentionally designed as a flexible framework that provides endless possibilities for adaptation and application. Its purpose is to prepare not just practitioner–scholars, but engaged professionals who transcend the expectations of yesterday’s professionals to transform lives, organizations, and communities, and to effect significant and lasting change.

9

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Assessment of Student Learning and Institutional Effectiveness While the model provides an exemplary framework for preparing professionals of the future, the absolute test of its effectiveness lies in the school’s collective ability to evaluate all aspects of its implementation and the outcomes achieved. Assessment is an integral component of all Chicago School programs and is performed at the level of the individual course, the program, and the institution. Within each program and function, specific goals are articulated and instruments are used to assess achievement.

Most importantly, data is collected and analyzed on a regular basis, and used to ensure a system of continuous improvement of program and institutional quality, operational efficiency, and effectiveness.

Conclusion What began as an effort to articulate the next model of graduate psychology education evolved over the course of a year’s study and documentation into something more profound and far more expansive. The Chicago School Model of Education carries with it implications that reach beyond the discipline of psychology and into other fields such as education, healthcare, and law, that have the potential to directly impact human lives. While the framework traces its roots to earlier training models that historically have been used to prepare psychologists, a large measure of the model’s significance lies in its applicability to a broader range of professional education.

The principles that underlie a Chicago School educational program will ensure not only professional excellence, but an aspiration to continually expand the discipline’s boundaries and applications; to embrace diversity and inclusion as fundamental tenets; and to engage in reciprocal partnerships that seek to solve pressing social issues and achieve lasting improvements in lives, organizations, and communities.

10

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Next Steps In the 2007 Self Study for the Higher Learning Commission, The Chicago School described itself from a developmental perspective: The school is now 28 years old. One might say that the years 1979–2000 were the childhood and adolescence of The Chicago School and the years 2001–2006 its passage into adulthood. Today, we have entered adulthood. This is a time when the choices are many, and the decisions are of paramount importance. It is a time to consider what we know about ourselves and the world and to contribute to the public good. Adulthood requires the maturity to understand one’s own strengths and weaknesses, to assess one’s place in and relation to the world in which one operates, and to recognize that the journey of self-discovery and learning never ends. The most successful institutions of higher education establish and achieve goals with the long-term journey in mind. We believe we are one of those institutions (p. 3).

After that re-accreditation visit, which resulted in a significantly expanded scope and maximum years of reaccreditation, the school entered a new phase of life—it became a family system. In the near future, it plans to grow itself into a community comprised of many families. In this exponential growth trajectory, The Chicago School is undergoing rapid development as a dynamic organism responding to its numerous environments and contexts.

From its inception, The Chicago School Model Steering Committee identified that the most challenging yet important steps to be taken in this project would not be during the “Articulating” phase; rather, the true work begins in implementation. Now that the community has voiced fuller, richer, and clearer statements of its values, learning goals, preferred teaching practices, and aspirations, the time has come to unite the entire learning community around a more focused and intentional academic purpose.

As the new mission statement of The Chicago School Education System articulates, the shared goal is to now make a larger and more lasting impact on the world by preparing innovative, engaged, purposeful agents of change committed to serving the global community. With a more defined path on how to do so, teachers, learners, and those who support them have the opportunity to hone The Chicago School’s transformational educational experience and venture more confidently into its quest to expand the reach of professional disciplines including—but no longer limited to—psychology.

The Steering Committee recommends the formation of an Implementation Steering Committee to incorporate The Chicago School Model of Education across the system. This committee should be populated by representatives from all campuses, including administrators, faculty, staff, students, alumni, and external stakeholders (e.g., site supervisors, community partners), and members will be selected to directly oversee a collection of groups working on four project sets: 1) Articulating Ambitions, 2) Building the Academic Infrastructure, 3) Engaging the System, and 4) Faculty Aspirations. As did the present Steering Committee, the Implementation Steering Committee will establish a charter and detailed project timelines with concrete and measurable markers. The following groups and goals are recommended for the Implementation Steering Committee’s consideration, and they can be modified and improved where possible to best meet the needs of the institution during the transition.

1.

Articulating Ambitions •

Learning Goals Task Force: Based upon the working groups’ findings, a cross-represented Learning Goals Task Force that includes program, administrative, and professional faculty, students, alumni, and external stakeholders will redefine each of the four institutional Learning Goals (see Appendices IX-XII). In so doing, they will articulate the ideal level of knowledge, skills, and attitudes desired of all graduates of the system and incorporate them into the school’s mission documents.

•

Values Task Force: With a similar structure and membership of the task force described above, the Values Task Force will draft a narrative summary for each of the institutional values (see Appendices V-VIII) to be incorporated into the mission documents of the school.

•

Mission Task Force: Upon the revision of the Institutional Learning Goals and Values, this group will examine the mission of The Chicago School of Professional Psychology and recommend any changes to better align it with the educational model and mission of The Chicago School Education System.

•

Communication and Needs Analysis Task Force: This task force will assess—through focus groups, meetings, and/or surveys—new ways to better incorporate The Chicago School Model of Education across the entire

11

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

learning community, including non-academic administrative areas of the institution, and develop recommendations and plans for desired change. With consultation from the marketing department, this group will create and deliver institution-wide training sessions to raise awareness of the revised Learning Goals, Values, and Mission; align website and institutional publication messaging; and compose communications to key internal and external stakeholders. Finally, it will examine and make recommendations about staffing and structure of the organization, as well as other budgetary implications, to optimize its ability to deliver on the model, both within and outside of the classroom.

2.

3.

Building the Academic Infrastructure •

Program Level Competency Alignment: With more robust definitions of Professional Practice, Scholarship, Diversity, and Professional Behavior, each academic program will need to redefine the program level competencies that support each learning goal. These definitions will be based on the minimum level of competency required of graduates by each program. Identified program-level leaders will receive direction from the Implementation Steering Committee and work closely with the Academic Effectiveness Review Committee (AERC).

•

Course Level Learning Objectives and Teaching Practices Alignment: Every course syllabi will then need to be examined to ensure that each program’s coursework collectively teaches the requisite competencies. In the process, faculty members will re-evaluate the actual teaching practices and experiences utilized in their courses to maximize the likelihood of offering the “transformational” type of educational experience to prepare the “engaged professional” as described throughout this document. Again, academic program representatives will receive direction from the Implementation Steering Committee and work closely with the AERC.

•

Co-Curricular Learning Objectives and Teaching Practices Alignment: All of the co-curricular areas of the school will likewise revisit or create learning objectives for their services and offerings based on the four Learning Goals. Department directors will receive direction from the Implementation Steering Committee and work closely with the AERC to embed their measures of student learning in program outcomes.

•

Pedagogy Task Force: This task force will generate and deliver faculty training opportunities to advance the best teaching practices inherent in The Chicago School Model of Education and referenced throughout this document.

It is recommended that more frequent “Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” workshops become the venue through which faculty gather to learn and share their teaching in the context of scholarship.

Engaging the System •

Institutional Effectiveness Review Committee: The self-review process overseen by the standing Institutional Effectiveness Review Committee (IERC) will provide the structure and protocol for assessing The Chicago School Model of Education. All parts of the model, including the three meta-themes of pluralism, engaged practice and scholarship, and impact on society, will be subjected to evidence-based evaluation with the overarching goal of continuous improvement. In addition, performance indicators will be purposefully scalable and transferable so that the model may be successfully exported to other programs and sites.

•

Engagement Advisory Board: New engagement initiatives abound at the school, taking faculty and students into new areas of the community and country. While this bears testimony to the incredible traction developing between the school and its partners, centralized selection, support, direction, and oversight would ensure mission/strategy alignment and project success. The Engagement Advisory Board would develop a “new engagement initiative process" that will resemble other such mechanisms already in place at the school to evaluate new proposals. The board will also assist project leaders in developing effective business/operational plans, achievable goals, quality cabinet and board presentations/requests, relationships and communication with Institutional Advancement, measurable outcomes and sound program evaluation plans, effective marketing/communications, proper partnership cultivation and relationship management, and internal/external resources and collaborations. As a centralized hub, the board could help make decisions about which projects to chose and support; provide ongoing high-level oversight; and compile a comprehensive set of service hours delivered, outcomes of community change, program costs, and funding. These reports would enhance the school’s annual report, outreach to donors, and image to key stakeholders.

•

Discipline Expansion Task Force: The Chicago School has created a unique model of education that can be applied to new disciplines through the development and delivery of innovative professional degree programs. It is proposed that the school’s understanding of and expertise in psychology should infuse the curriculum of new

12

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

degree programs to help it expand its reach. In turn, new disciplines represented in The Chicago School Education System will inform and advance the curriculum of the psychology degree programs. Committed to a “double-bottom line,” The Chicago School Education System operates to make a social impact in addition to operating successful schools and related enterprises. In other words, the purpose is no longer to simply provide a premier education; rather, the “business of education” is now the primary—but not necessarily the only—means to realize its true non-profit mission, which is to make a substantial difference in society and around the world.

Therefore, the new disciplines and degree programs offered should be selected based upon their ability to prepare “engaged professionals” and to collaborate with each other to more powerfully address pressing social problems. This task force would explore such opportunities and make recommendations about which disciplines are particularly well-suited for The Chicago School Model of Education.

4.

Faculty Aspirations •

Faculty Aspirations Task Force: Throughout this self-study process, participants were asked to identify “aspirations” and aspects they thought were “absent” in the model (see Appendix XV). The Faculty Aspirations Task Force, a proposed committee of the Faculty Council, would examine the following recommendations voiced directly from the administrative, program, and professional faculty: o

Increase Interactions and Improve Communications a. b. c. d.

o

Increase the Commitment to Diversity and Internationalization a. b. c.

o

Increase attention to diverse populations beyond those who have been historically underserved Increase diversity across the learning community, training on ways to best “model” diversity in the classroom, support around acclimation and acculturation, and self-care programs Promote and expand international psychology programs

Increase Support for Scholarship and Teaching a. b. c. d.

o

Increase alumni mentoring and field supervision opportunities Create more opportunities for students and faculty members to collaborate in training and practice settings, professional organizations, community engaged scholarship, and advocacy initiatives Increase opportunities for cross-program and cross-campus interactions Increase the transparency, congruence, and cohesiveness in communication, particularly around philosophy and future goals of the institution

More intensely support scholarship that addresses the needs of diverse communities Increase resources to support the pursuit of grants, publications, presentations, and other scholarly work Clarify the importance that scholarship should be relevantly linked to social, economic, and policy needs Increase time for faculty to explore ways to integrate contemporary models into their teaching while still balancing the need to teach students more demonstrated, traditional, and evidence-based methods

Increase Support for Innovation a. b. c. d.

Develop more effective ways to assess critical thinking skills, professional comportment, and higher-level research activities Maintain commitment to base innovative programming on data from the marketplace Develop a stronger and more intentional information technology infrastructure to support new ways of teaching and learning Provide training and education about how the school wants people to innovate and in what areas

Finally, as a living system, certain inherent dynamics are constantly at play and in tension within The Chicago School. Steering Committee member Dr. Ken Fogel, who led one of the two Clinical Psychology working groups, identified through his group’s discussions the following dialectics inherent in The Chicago School’s culture that the Steering Committee should respect and leverage throughout the implementation process and as the school enters this new period of exponential growth:

13

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

1.

Assimilation vs. Accommodation: In a parallel manner to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, the school needs to balance the extent to which it absorbs and adopts external information into already existing structures (assimilation) with structural change and program creation (accommodation).

2.

Theory vs. Application: Across programs, students should learn underlying theories while simultaneously learning how to apply them; similarly, programs should be developed according to established theories and data mindful of how graduates will apply their disciplines in the context of “the real world.”

3.

Process vs. Content: Learning is a lifelong and persistent process, but it involves specific material that students must know in order to be competent. The extent to which the school focuses on one or the other dictates resource allocation.

4.

Divergence vs. Convergence: Divergent thinking is the hallmark of creativity and innovation, while convergent thinking typifies the scientific method. Clearly, both are important in an entrepreneurial institution of higher learning.

5.

Values vs. Constraints: Underlying values are the internal motivators that define projects and their potential, while external constraints provide necessary, but often frustrating, boundaries to their actual scope.

6.

Forward-Thinking, Forward-Looking vs. Present-Focused, Conservatism: The legitimacy of these viewpoints is contingent on context and personal beliefs. For some, innovation is seen as the preferred path during times of chaos or uncertainty and conservatism as the most beneficial during periods of stability. For others, the reverse holds true.

7.

Neutral vs. Agenda-Based Innovation: The former is presumably the goal of science-based practice and strengthens the validity of programs. The latter holds that there is no objective “vacuum” and seeks solutions in light of social contexts.

8.

Uniqueness vs. Standards: The school strives to be distinctive and "stand out," while also fitting into the broader community and ensuring that its students receive a "standardized" education.

9.

Competition vs. Collaboration: The Chicago School and its students need to be competitive in the marketplace.

However, collaboration is a strongly desired professional behavior for students during and after their graduate studies and for the school in the broader professional community.

10. Advocacy for Others (Social Advocacy) vs. Advocacy for Selves (Professional Advocacy): Professionals need to balance their own interests with those who they serve.

14

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Appendix I The Chicago School Model of Education Framework

The Chicago School Model of Education is the sum of interactions between institutional values and learning goals:

Use the following five “A+ Probes” to facilitate each discussion, rooting them in both current practice and future expectations in regards to TEACHING and LEARNING at The Chicago School: Assumptions: Defined as the present organizational beliefs and values of The Chicago School around teaching and learning. Questions: What are the institution’s beliefs about learning? What are the institution’s priorities? What do we collectively believe is important to integrate into our teaching and learning? Why? Attitudes: Defined as individual beliefs and values that frame faculty members’ approaches to teaching and learning.

Questions: What drew you to The Chicago School and keeps you coming back? What do you do uniquely here that you would do differently if at a different institution? How are student attitudes about teaching and learning expressed at the school?

Actualities: Defined as present teaching and learning practices at The Chicago School. Questions: What do we actually do? How do we actually prepare faculty and students? How do we reinforce what we do? What mechanisms do we use?

What distinctive approaches do we take to teaching and learning? Why? Aspirations: Defined as our dreams, wishes, and hopes for the future in regards to teaching and learning. Questions: What do we imagine for the future? What goals do we have? What social and generational trends encourage different ways of educating?

Absent: Defined as what is missing from the discussions about teaching and learning (i.e., “Parking Lot” issues).

Questions: What in the current assumptions, attitudes, actualities, and aspirations of The Chicago School is missing and needs to be added? What have we not included that is important to us or should be important?

15

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Appendix II Resource Guide: Institutional Values Value

Education

Innovation

Community

Service

Institutional Assumptions

Faculty Attitudes

The Chicago School provides a premier education that prepares students to positively impact the world, successfully compete in their careers, and effectively fill market needs. Expanding on the Vail Model, the institution has incorporated the learning goals of Diversity and Professional Behavior to stand alongside Professional Practice and Scholarship. The school understands the recursive relation between Professional Practice and Scholarship and promotes a broad definition of evidence-based practice. The school deeply values the incorporation of diversity into all of its programming and remains committed to developing its expertise in this area.

Chicago School faculty members purport that education is a lifelong process actualized through a meaningful connection to the community and mentorship. Students are best trained by those who are experts in practice, scholarship, and teaching, and diversity is believed to be central in the formation of an effective learning community.

Professional comportment and content knowledge are considered essential in The Chicago School Model of Education.

Innovation is the means by which a field of study can expand its reach and impact. Likewise, it is the way to identify new ways in which a discipline can help solve pressing social issues. The Chicago School is deeply committed to identify and employ pioneering ways to teach diversity, practice multiculturalism, and have a greater impact in the world. Through modeling and instruction, the school seeks to prepare graduates who are themselves innovators in their chosen fields.

The Chicago School faculty members believe that innovation enhances the educational experience and promotes learning outcomes. They embrace a broad and inclusive definition of scholarship, yet there is also a strong conviction that students should receive solid preparation in traditional research methodologies.

Similarly, while faculty members expressed interest in utilizing the most “cutting edge” approaches to teach diversity, they also identified an unclear institutional definition and direction that is currently limiting innovation in this area. In addition to more traditional methods of teaching professional comportment within the classroom and through faculty/advisor relationships, the faculty value the way the institution has charged the co-curricular areas of the school with the responsibility to help develop the professional behavior of its students.

The Chicago School has a “core community” that serves as the base for learning, and the modeling encountered in this learning community becomes reflected in the practice and professional behavior of students and faculty within the greater communities served. The interactions between members of The Chicago School and the extended community are intentional. They actively involve alumni and are critical to the student transformational process. Teaching and learning diversity requires a pluralistic philosophy that advances inclusion, social justice, and self-reflection. Community establishes the relevance of The Chicago School’s education, scholarship, and practice.

Chicago School faculty members believe that the challenges inherent in maintaining a cohesive core community in a rapidly growing organization present opportunities, though it requires constant change and a shared pluralistic philosophy. Mutual respect and the desire to collaborate in the core community are expected to transfer to skills ultimately applied with external constituents. Diversity is seen as a central part of this learning process, as a diverse community ensures diversity of thought, and it requires both breadth and depth to truly meet community needs. Alumni are seen as a unique and critical part of the diverse Chicago School community who can provide a wide range of learning and mentoring experiences to students. Education, scholarship, and practice should all benefit the community, and professionals need a solid foundation in established theory as well as an evidence-based approach in order to adapt their knowledge, skills, and attitudes to succeed in “real-world” situations.

Applied professional experiences provide the opportunity to develop the requisite knowledge, skills, and attitudes in order to meet the needs of the people ultimately being served. The engagement between the provider and the recipient of services is mutually beneficial, as both benefit through their interactions. The Chicago School seeks to prepare graduates who can apply their discipline to help individual citizens as well as impact larger social systems and policies.

The Chicago School faculty members deeply value how service in community generates collaborative learning relationships between the school and its external constituents. In addition to traditional practica and internships, student and faculty engagement through community scholarship (e.g., community service, service learning, and community-based research) is seen as the model approach to preparing students and meeting community needs in ways not otherwise possible.

16

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Appendix III Resource Guide: Institutional Learning Goals Learning Goal

Professional Practice

Scholarship

Diversity

Professional Behavior

Institutional Assumptions

Faculty Attitudes

The Chicago School prepares students for the future and to be competitive in the marketplace through expert teachers-practitioners and applied learning experiences. The institution seeks to advance the understanding and to expand the reach of professional disciplines into new sectors, populations, and geographies. With a primary goal to train ethical and competent practitioners, Chicago School students are closely mentored to become leading professionals and directly engage themselves in the community to develop self-awareness, career goals, social awareness, and civic responsibility. In the process, they discover their call to service and the true impact they can have on the world.

Seeing themselves as gatekeepers to the professions, The Chicago School faculty establishes high professional standards and strives to impart evidence-based practices to prepare highly qualified and ethical service agents. Embracing innovation as a means to improve both teaching and learning, members seek creative ways to engage students in the role of service providers who have a deep respect for and proficiency in working with diversity and difference. Chicago School faculty members embrace their responsibilities to educate and mentor the next generation of professionals, but they also understand the transformative learning and reciprocal benefits of partnering with experts in the community in preparing their students for independent practice.

The Chicago School holds that professionals apply scholarship in real time and that traditional research methodologies are replicated into an evidence-based approach to practice. The school embraces a broad definition of scholarship, supporting different scholarly activities across and between academic programs yet still demands standards that ensure adequate rigor, quality, relevancy, and impact. The institution promotes innovation in scholarship and seeks faculty who can model and mentor unique approaches in knowledge discovery, teaching, and professional practice.

While not required to engage in traditional research that leads to publication, The Chicago School faculty expects its members to participate in some type of scholarly activity that values research and addresses relevant community needs. They seek to infuse their attitudes around scholarship and its relation to practice and teaching through modeling, mentorship, and collaboration. Finally, they seek an institutional definition of scholarship that incorporates divergent perspectives and reduces a perceived “scholar” versus “practitioner” divide, and they express an interest in benchmarking the innovativeness of Chicago School scholarship to other institutions of higher learning.

Diversity defines The Chicago School’s identity as an educational institution, and this attracts students, faculty, and staff who embrace diversity as the core of human interchange. While the school has been recognized for its excellence in diversity education and training, it has never been complacent in its quest to innovate and lead the field in the areas of curriculum design and pedagogy, scholarship, professional behavior, and practice. Seeking to develop diversity competence across the learning community, the school’s academic programs, complemented by numerous co-curricular learning opportunities, provide constant exposure to first-hand, multicultural experiences, improving all constituents’ ability to more effectively serve broader domestic and international communities.

The Chicago School sees itself as an inclusive educational institution, and faculty members value the various ways in which diversity is integrated into the curricula and the strong emphasis on recruiting diverse students and faculty. Participants expressed a deep interest in sustaining a cohesive learning community that, despite desired difference, shares core values and common educational goals.

Faculty members, while viewing themselves as competent diversity educators, hold that true multicultural learning requires direct and applied experience outside of the classroom with people different from one’s self, both in terms of supervised experience and through relevant and applied scholarship. Perhaps because of the deep commitment to diversity by both the institution and the faculty, this learning goal generated the most ideas for improvement, including curriculum development and standards, teaching methods, social advocacy, and integration into the school’s rapidly growing community.

The core component of the Professional Behavior learning goal is ethics, though it calls for a more global way of thinking, behaving, and feeling. While academic departments may generate unique understandings of professional behavior in light of their competencies, degree requirements, and the nature of work in which their graduates engage, there is a clear understanding of its importance as a teachable subject both within and outside the classroom. Professional behavior is developed through The Chicago School’s innovative programs, scholarship, and pedagogy, which likewise prepare graduates to become leaders in their fields.

Professional behavior is a practice that is delivered and developed particularly through the values of service and community. The value of community enjoins our students to provide service in a number of ways during their graduate education, and these opportunities guide them into the professional behavior requirements of their chosen profession through the teaching, mentoring, supervision, and advisement of faculty, site supervisors, and staff members.

The Chicago School faculty endorses setting high professional behavior standards, holding its members accountable to them, responding to concerns through support and/or discipline depending upon the nature of the situation, maintaining open lines of communication, and rewarding exemplary performance. With an appreciation for the unique experiences that have shaped their own and their students’ understanding and approach to professional behavior, there is a respect and understanding that both can learn more effective ways to leverage professional behavior toward desired outcomes. Finally, faculty members believe that mentoring and rolemodeling are the most effective ways to teach professional behavior.

17

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Appendix IV Resource Guide: Highlight Actualities

Education

Innovation

Community

Service

Professional Practice

Scholarship

Diversity

Professional Behavior

Applied Learning and Practitioner Faculty: …students put theory into realtime practice, delivering services under the supervision of seasoned professionals.

Additionally, all faculty members are practitioners in the field, ensuring that students are continually exposed to examples that demonstrate and reinforce theories taught in the classroom.

ABA Contract School— Garfield Park Preparatory Academy: Here students in the Applied Behavior Analysis program work under the supervision of Board-Certified Behavior Analysts in using ABA techniques to dramatically improve the academic performance in economically and educationally disadvantaged children.

Dissertation Day: An annual Dissertation Day provides Clinical Psy.D. students with a forum for presenting their research, and students in all programs have opportunities to display posters or present original research at professional conferences.

Diversity-Infused Curricula: A comprehensive diversity-infused curriculum provides the foundation for each course in every program, instilling in all students the multicultural awareness, sensitivity, and competence to accommodate individual needs in the delivery of services.

Center for Academic Excellence: The Center for Academic Excellence complements classroom instruction by providing a wide range of services designed to increase success in the academic world as well as effectiveness in professional life.

Parent Child Interaction Therapy: Under the supervision of faculty, students use an earbug system to counsel parents (observed through a one-way mirror) through the process of mastering positive communication and discipline strategies with their children.

The result is a unique opportunity for students to learn a specialized therapy, collect data to add to the growing base of knowledge that supports this evidence-based treatment, and make a significant difference in the lives of children and parents….

Online Applied Research Project and Cultural Impact Conference: …online programs specifically require students to apply classroom learning directly to their current workplace. An annual Cultural Impact Conference draws professionals from the Chicago area and beyond to present, participate in, and listen to reports of cutting-edge research that targets real-world community needs.

Community-Based Research: These initiatives are far more than research for research’s sake; they seek to assist community organizations in evaluating and fine-tuning services that benefit their clients, thereby increasing the impact that can be realized from a partnership with Chicago School students.

Book of the Year: A Book of the Year, selected by a broadbased institutional committee for its focus on cultural challenges or diversity issues, is required reading for all students, faculty, and staff, and functions as the impetus for a year-long series of activities and discussions.

Evaluation of Professional Comportment: Program faculty members support the premise that a student’s professional comportment, both in the class and in the field, is as critical a factor in professional preparation as content mastery.

To that end, a Faculty Council task force recently articulated the definition of “professional comportment” across all programs and created a unique means by which this goal can be systematically evaluated.

Center for Latino Mental Health: …created to address the pressing need for culturally competent psychological services for Chicago’s rapidly growing Latino/a population, [the center provides] students with real-world experience in tailoring services for individuals who historically have viewed mental health care with skepticism, fear, and a lack of understanding.

Alumni Relations: By serving as mentors, guest lecturers, advisory board members, and practicum supervisors, [alumni] successfully reinforce lessons learned in the classroom, provide valuable connections between school and community, and demonstrate through example the critical role that professional behavior plays in the life of a practitioner.

Center for International Studies: The Center for International Studies offers a variety of service learning opportunities that involve students in direct service activities while increasing their understanding of global ethnic conflict, international human rights, global justice, international relations, diplomacy, and other cultural issues.

Community Service and Student Groups: Community service activities … serve as examples of professional behavior’s intersection with the value of service. The studentrun Social Justice Group seeks to educate members, classmates, and colleagues on issues of injustice and to explore the contributions that professionals can make to countering racism, classism, sexism, prejudice, economic exploitation, and relations of dominance.

The Forensic Center: As the practice arm of the Department of Forensic Psychology, The Chicago School Forensic Center brings students together with local organizations on projects that bolster hands-on learning experiences while addressing unmet needs in the community.

Applied Practice and Scholarship: Students in all programs complete practicum, internship opportunities, and/or applied research projects through which they actively apply what they have learned in real-world settings. The benefits are reciprocal; students develop and hone professional practice skills, which increase their readiness for and competitiveness in the marketplace; at the same time, tremendous value is added to the partnering organizations and the clients they serve.

18

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Appendix V The Value of Education Assumptions The Chicago School provides a premier education that prepares students to positively impact the world, successfully compete in their careers, and effectively fill market needs. Expanding on the Vail Model, the institution has incorporated the learning goals of Diversity and Professional Behavior to stand alongside Professional Practice and Scholarship. The school understands the recursive relation between Professional Practice and Scholarship and promotes a broad definition of evidence-based practice.

The school deeply values the incorporation of diversity into all of its programming and remains committed to developing its expertise in this area.

The Chicago School prepares students for the future. It seeks to produce highly qualified and ethical practitioners who are competitive in the marketplace and sophisticated in working across human differences in order to make a positive impact in the lives of those with whom they work. An innovative market leader, The Chicago School continually scans the emerging needs of its communities and embraces a responsibility to lead higher education through innovative programming that can influence and expand the reach of its areas of study.

The Chicago School was founded on the Vail Model, and it supports the educational premise that scholarship should inform the practice of one’s profession and that practice should, in turn, inform scholarship. In other words, professionals engage in real time, evidenced-based practice (i.e., application of interventions based upon relevant and current scholarship, utilization of assessment techniques designed to measure impact, and adjustment of interventions accordingly). The institution respects the published and presented work of other professionals as a guide to its instructional design. Additionally, the school prepares students to conduct research in many different modes and encourages participation in conferences, professional presentations, and submissions for publication. All programs require scholarly capstone projects, including dissertations, theses, applied research projects, or conceptual papers, which coupled with required real-world learning activities, support the integration of scholarship and professional practice.

The Chicago School expanded upon its roots in the Vail Model, adding two additional institutional learning goals of Diversity and Professional Behavior. As such, those goals, alongside Scholarship and Professional Practice, underlie the development and delivery of all Chicago School curricula and serve to further distinguish its alumni from graduates of other professional schools that base their programs solely on the Vail Model of education.

Since its inception, The Chicago School has emphasized diversity in all aspects of its educational programming. It has been recognized by the National Council of Schools and Programs in Professional Psychology (NCSPP) for its leadership in the area of diversity education and training. While a central value, recent institutional reviews, including the 2007 Higher Learning Commission Self-Study and the institutional review to articulate The Chicago School Model of Education, revealed a growing opinion among faculty, staff, and students that the school, while delivering on its diversity promise, needs to constantly re-commit itself to this value if it is to keep its “edge.”

Identified early in this process as the greatest opportunity for improvement, a special task force was therefore organized to dive more deeply into the institution’s understanding and approach to diversity. The school believes that it can, once again, lead the educational community in this arena, trusting that its faculty and administrative leaders are qualified to undertake the task. A special appendix (see Appendix XVI) is dedicated to the task force’s summary of its Multicultural Competence Exploratory Study.

Attitudes Chicago School faculty members purport that education is a lifelong process actualized through a meaningful connection to the community and mentorship. Students are best trained by those who are experts in practice, scholarship and teaching, and diversity is believed to be central in the formation of an effective learning community. Professional comportment and content knowledge are considered essential in The Chicago School Model of Education.

19

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

The Chicago School faculty views education as a lifelong process that makes a significant difference in the world through graduates, scholarship, and service to the community. At the same time, they acknowledge the need to be continuously learning from the external community through their students, the people with whom they work and train, and community partners. As such, faculty members model the pursuit of a lifelong approach to education.

Similarly, The Chicago School hires faculty members who are practitioners in their area of expertise with a demonstrated track record of skillfully integrating scholarship and practice, and with equal importance, the ability to transfer this competency to students in the classroom. The institution purposefully recruits a diverse faculty and student body because it knows that the most effective learning communities promote interactions between members with different backgrounds, experiences, and viewpoints.

In order to effectively educate students, an emphasis is placed on developing curricular and co-curricular programs that meet unique needs that are often left unaddressed by other “traditional” Vail Model programs.

Finally, the faculty expresses deep interest in teaching and developing competencies that extend beyond the strict academic content of their programs. For example, they believe that professional comportment (i.e., interpersonal and professional competence, self-awareness and self-reflection, openness to feedback, proactive and engaged resolution of problems) should be explicitly taught and evaluated as well.

Actualities 1.

2.

3.

Rooted in the Vail Model, The Chicago School’s curriculum and programming emphasize competency in practice through the application of theory under close supervision in real-world situations.

•

ABA Contract School: The ABA Program developed a contract school within the Chicago Public School system that will serve elementary students by applying a behavior analytic methodology to education while simultaneously training students to become skilled practitioners.

•

Community Partnerships: The Community Partnerships office connects students to local agencies through a myriad of community engaged scholarship activities (e.g., community service, service learning, and communitybased research).

•

Applied Research: Dedicated student advisors in the Online Campus guide each student through an Applied Research Project that requires the rigorous application of theory to solve real-world problems in the students’ workplaces. Similarly, doctoral programs encourage applied and relevant dissertations that respond to actual individual or organizational needs while developing the students’ research skills and expertise.

•

The Forensic Center: The Forensic Center offers students training in Parent Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) while they serve the community by teaching parenting skills to families under the live supervision of Forensic Faculty.

The school’s practitioner–scholar faculty offer creative opportunities for simulated practice in the curriculum.

•

Simulated Learning Experiences: Students in the M.A. Forensic Program participate in both mock trials and simulated hostage negotiation, learning how to apply what they have learned in real-time, high-stake situations.

•

Assessment Center: In the M.A. Industrial/Organizational Program, first-year students participate in a live Assessment Center in which they need to demonstrate mastery of required competencies. The Center is conducted by third- and fourth-year Business Psy.D. students, offering them the learning experience of being assessors under in-vivo supervision with seasoned faculty members.

The integration of multicultural issues into the educational experience is wide-spread, developed both organically and intentionally, and exemplified in both curricular and co-curricular offerings.

•

Diversity in Mission and Committees: The school expresses a commitment to diversity in its Mission Documents and through the establishment of the Faculty Council’s Multicultural and Diversity Affairs Committee and the Center for Multicultural and Diversity Studies.

•

Center for International Studies: Additionally, The Chicago School established the Center for International Studies, which coordinates international service learning trips and internships, services for international students, and global programming initiatives.

20

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

•

Diversity Learning Goal: Diversity has been established as an institutional learning goal (students collectively achieved 3.4/4.0 in Academic Year 2007–2008), and every academic program has a “Diversity” competency.

•

Cultural Impact Conference: The annual Cultural Impact Conference (CIC) is either required or encouraged by all academic programs.

•

Diversity Infused Curriculum: Diversity education has been infused throughout the curricula. Results from student course surveys in 2008 show that 83% of students across all campuses “agreed” or “strongly agreed” (20% and 63%, respectively) that “Issues of individual difference were integrated into readings, assignments, and class discussions.” Similarly, 75% of students “agreed” or “strongly agreed” (20% and 55%, respectively) that “This course expanded my awareness about personal assumptions or biases I hold regarding others different than myself.”

•

Diversity Scholarship: Between 2005 and 2007, completed Clinical Psy.D. dissertations that focused on diversity issues and populations ranged between 45% to 78% per year.

•

Multicultural Teaching Excellence Award: In 2006, the institution introduced the “Award for Multicultural Teaching Excellence”. Recent winners include Drs. Gary Walls, Chris Leonhard, and Chanté DeLoach.

•

Center for Latino Mental Health: In 2008, The Chicago School launched the Center for Latino Mental Health, which offers programming to prepare students to work effectively with the Latino/a population.

•

Diversity Fellowships and Scholarships: Over the past two academic years, the Center for Multicultural and Diversity Studies has awarded nearly $90,000 per year in scholarships and fellowships to support diversification of the student body and multicultural research under faculty supervision. In 2006–2007, this amount was approximately $60,000.

•

Professional Development Seminars: The required Professional Development class in each program’s firstyear curriculum includes a diversity component.

•

International Initiatives: Recent initiatives to advance multicultural education opportunities include the addition of a representative in the school’s China Office and a Ph.D. program in International Psychology.

•

Diversity Certificates: The IO/Excel track master’s degree now offers a Certificate in Diversity Management.

•

Training Sites: Through the site development efforts of the Office of Applied Professional Practice (formerly Placement and Training), approximately 81% of the school’s external training sites provide students the opportunity to deliver services to African-American clients, and 77% offer opportunities with Latino/a clients as either a major or minor part of their training.

•

Multicultural Competence Exploratory Study: In January 2009 the institution, recognizing the need to reexamine its understanding and approach to diversity, launched a comprehensive self-study on the structures, departments, operations, academics, and co-curricular programs that support and advance multiculturalism (see Appendix XVI).

21

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Appendix VI The Value of Innovation Assumptions Innovation is the means by which a field of study can expand its reach and impact. Likewise, it is the way to identify new ways in which a discipline can help solve pressing social issues. The Chicago School is deeply committed to identify and employ pioneering ways to teach diversity, practice multiculturalism, and have a greater impact in the world. Through modeling and instruction, the school seeks to prepare graduates who are themselves innovators in their chosen fields.

The Chicago School believes that innovation provides the avenue to expand the reach of a particular field of study, and it reflects the capacity for adaptation that parallels a living system’s flexibility and dynamism in order to excel and thrive. The school affords faculty and students the freedom and flexibility to engage in diverse professional practice and scholarship opportunities and encourages faculty to actively share information about these experiences with their students. Likewise, students are encouraged to pursue unique practicum and internship opportunities that serve diverse and underserved populations. The institution has also provided them with the chance to participate in unique community engaged scholarship activities in their first year in order to build experience and raise their awareness of community needs, and nearly 50% voluntarily elected to do so in the 2008-2009 academic year.

Innovation can likewise identify new ways for a particular discipline to help address pressing social issues. Through its numerous engagement activities, The Chicago School seeks to uniquely “brand” its areas of study as relevant avenues toward social change and recruits faculty who share this value. As a result, students can expect to encounter pioneering philosophies and teaching practices in the classroom and collaborate in cutting edge scholarship that addresses real community needs.

Toward this end, The Chicago School is committed to continually seek innovative methods to teach and practice diversity. The institution values the relation between innovation and diversity, encouraging faculty to find unique ways to better service the diverse needs of students, prepare practitioners to function in a multicultural world, and implement new methods of teaching.

With a steady and ever-increasing movement toward blended and fully online programming, The Chicago School is now reaching constituents who would otherwise not have access to its education due to geography, stage of life, or disability.

The innovations pervading the school are believed to inspire students to be innovative themselves. As future professionals entrusted to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse and complex world, graduates require the confidence to challenge traditional ways of thinking and the creativity to experiment with new applications of their knowledge and skills in informed ways.

Attitudes The Chicago School faculty members believe that innovation enhances the educational experience and promotes learning outcomes. They embrace a broad and inclusive definition of scholarship, yet there is also a strong conviction that students should receive solid preparation in traditional research methodologies. Similarly, while faculty members expressed interest in utilizing the most “cutting edge” approaches to teach diversity, they also identified an unclear institutional definition and direction that is currently limiting innovation in this area. In addition to more traditional methods of teaching professional comportment within the classroom and through faculty/advisor relationships, the faculty value the way the institution has charged the cocurricular areas of the school with the responsibility to help develop the professional behavior of its students.

The Chicago School faculty believes that innovation enhances the educational experience and learning outcomes while allowing programs to adaptively meet the changing needs of their professions. Feeling supported in their ability to propose and pursue innovations in teaching, scholarship, and practice, numerous faculty-generated initiatives have taken root and contribute to the creative offerings of The Chicago School.

While the faculty embrace the broader conceptualization of scholarship put forth by Ernest Boyer, which supports the scholarly activities of discovery, integration, application, and teaching, they also express the need for a solid foundation of research skills and a healthy caution of changing simply for the sake of change. Similarly, they identified the need to manage the natural

22

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

tensions that emerge within an innovative and entrepreneurial atmosphere such as The Chicago School; namely, they expressed the need to ensure quality within an ever-changing environment, balance novelty and tradition, support both organic as well as institution-driven innovation, and dedicate the necessary time to think and act creatively while meeting day-to-day student needs.

A variety of attitudes and opinions were expressed around the relation between diversity and innovation. As evidenced by the list of actual innovative practices presented below, there is a great appreciation for the many creative ways in which diversity is taught and supported in the school. However, the faculty expressed a general lack of clarity in terms of the overall definition and direction of diversity for the school. As previously mentioned, the early discovery of such questions and concerns prompted the formation of a separate diversity task force to explore these questions in more detail (see Appendix XVI).

Attitudes about applying innovative methods to teach professional behavior understandably vary across program and professional faculty. Program faculty support the premise that a student’s professional comportment, both within and outside of the classroom, is often of equal or even greater importance than content knowledge or skills, yet they also recognize the limitations of how this can be taught within the structure of the curriculum. Recently, a task force of faculty council, representing both program and professional faculty, articulated The Chicago School’s definition of “professional comportment” across all programs and created a unique means by which this can be systematically evaluated.

Program faculty members seek to teach professional behavior by treating students as colleagues who often bring experiences and ideas from which faculty members can learn. Likewise, they express a deep desire to establish an atmosphere of cooperation and collaboration—as opposed to competition—with students as way to model what they expect in return.

Professional faculty who work within the co-curricular areas of the school (e.g., Applied Professional Practice, Community Partnerships, Career Services, Clinical Services, Center for Academic Excellence, Center for Multicultural and Diversity Studies, Center for International Studies, The Chicago School Library) have all established learning goals for their departments that include the teaching and evaluation of students’ professional behavior as they utilize and participate in their services.

Actualities 1.

2.

The Chicago School has developed a unique and distinctive menu of degree programs that meet market needs and distinguishes it from all other institutions of higher learning.

•

Master’s and Doctorate in Applied Behavior Analysis: With only a handful of similar programs in the nation, graduates from these degree programs are being prepared to work with the significantly increasing prevalence of autism as well as a variety of other populations.

•

Master’s in Forensic Psychology and Doctorate in Clinical Forensic Psychology: There are few master’s and even fewer doctoral forensic programs in the country with none other offered in the Midwest.

•

Doctorate in International Psychology: Available fully online, this program is the first of its kind and offers concentrations in Trauma and Organizations and Systems.

•

Master’s in I/O Psychology and Doctorate in Business Psychology: The M.A. I/O program was the first of its kind to ground itself in the Vail Model, and the Psy.D. in Business Psychology is the first of its kind in the country.

•

Master’s in Psychology, Master’s in Applied Forensic Psychology Services, and Master’s in Applied Industrial and Organizational Psychology: These non-licensure, fully online programs are geared toward working, non-psychology professionals who are learning how to apply psychology to advance their careers.

Concentrations in the MAP program include Child and Adolescent Psychology, International Psychology, Gerontology, Organizational Leadership, Sport and Exercise Psychology, and several more in development.

•

Certificate in Latino Mental Health: This certificate helps advance the clinical, cultural, and language proficiency of professionals to more effectively meet the unique needs of the Latino/a population.

Recognizing the importance of connecting with the community to develop innovative strategies and make programmatic changes to meet market and social needs, The Chicago School provides innovative professional practice and training opportunities to its students and faculty.

•

Community Partnerships: The Community Partnerships office currently maintains relationships with approximately 40 local agencies in which Chicago School students engage in community service, service learning, and community-based research. Through mutual agreements, The Chicago School helps community

23

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

organizations build capacity by providing direct service, training, supervision, and research. The community organizations, in turn, provide students with experiences in the social, political, governmental, and multicultural world of social service. As a result, faculty and students are able to channel the skills they teach and learn in the classroom directly into the community through these projects and produce real-world results.

3.

•

The Forensic Center: As the practice arm of the Department of Forensic Psychology, The Chicago School Forensic Center brings students together with local organizations on projects that bolster hands-on learning experiences while addressing unmet needs in the community. Students benefit from the opportunity to put classroom instruction into practice in settings that range from the Juvenile Probation and Court Services Department of Cook County and Illinois Department of Children and Family Service agencies to women’s shelters and programs for ex-offenders.

•

Contract Schools: Recognizing a need and opportunity in the Chicago Public School system, the Applied Behavior Analysis Department supported the development of several contract schools. Using empiricallyvalidated and data-driven instruction with Chicago School faculty members and students under their supervision, the curriculum and procedures are validated each day and changed immediately to meet the learning needs of every child. Working closely with the Center for Polytechnical Education, the department recently won a contract for an open enrollment high school based on the Morningside Model of Generative Instruction. Similarly, the department worked closely with the Hope Institute of Springfield, Illinois, in the development of a special education elementary school with several satellite classrooms in other schools that will use the same behavioral principles, procedures, and curricula. Finally, the Garfield Park Preparatory Academy (GPPA) was created through The Chicago School’s Community Education subsidiary. GPPA is designed around the "Accelerated Independent Learner" Model most closely associated with Columbia University Teachers College and Dr. Douglas Greer. The GPPA effort was lead by ABA faculty Associate Professor Dr. Denise Ross, who has assumed the role of principal of the school. Collectively, these endeavors provide students with excellent community learning laboratories in which they will work side by side with their professors applying the principles and science of Applied Behavior Analysis to make a daily difference for children in the community.

•

The Chicago School’s “Mobile” Counseling Center: For several years, the Office of Clinical Services has operated a practicum program that fulfills the student counseling center needs of the Harrington College of Design and John Marshall Law School. Chicago School students, under faculty supervision, provide therapy services and a variety of outreach activities to improve the mental health and well-being of those schools’ student populations.

•

International Service Trips: The Chicago School has increased the number of international trips that involve a service and practice component, including in areas of the world such as Sri Lanka, Bethlehem and the Middle East, China, and Germany. For two consecutive years, teams of Chicago School students have traveled to the United Nations to directly participate in sessions of the Commission on the Status of Women.

•

Faculty Practice: Dr. Jaleel Abdul-Adil, Associate Professor in the Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program, designed and developed the Young Warriors program, a culture-specific pro-social development intervention that disseminates positive messages and develops social consciousness in urban youth who are at-risk for, or involved with, violence and other health-related issues. The Young Warriors program adopts a social-cognition model that implements intervention strategies based on popular mass media, particularly song lyrics, music videos, and contemporary movies related to modern rap music and hip-hop culture. Since co-founding the program in 1990, Dr. Abdul-Adil has conducted the Young Warriors program in several schools, agencies, and other community settings for urban minority children and adolescents. In addition, Dr. Abdul-Adil has provided consultation to several organizations regarding awareness and use of popular media in clinical and community interventions that target urban youth and their families.

•

School Psychology Curriculum: As an example of how The Chicago School listens to and responds to the community, the School Psychology program interviewed supervisors and students and determined that it needed to quickly change the sequence and content of one of its assessment courses.

•

Introduction of “Mixed” Practicum: Similarly, in response to community feedback and need, the Clinical Psy.D. department innovated its curriculum to include “mixed practicum” training, allowing students more flexibility in accumulating their formal testing requirements prior to internship while engaging in activities more reflective of the clinical work actually being done in the community.

The Chicago School engages in innovative scholarship:

24

The Chicago School Model of Education

•

Faculty Scholarship: Dr. Lukasz Konopka was recently published in Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association on his research using EEGs to measure the effect that painting and drawing have on brain activity in a therapeutic setting. The results can be used to tailor treatment to individual needs and to accurately measure the effect the treatment has on both brain activity and behavior. The use of brain imaging technology in this manner represents a radical departure from more traditional assessment methods; namely, whereas most researchers study groups of individuals who share behavior patterns to predict what is happening in the brain, Dr. Konopka’s research directly assesses effects of tailored treatment on both the brain and behavior.

•

Community-Based Scholarship:

•

4.

Preparing Engaged Professionals

o

Ann Bukowski, Jennifer Shultz, M.A. (Clinical Psy.D. students), and Jembralyn Jones (Clinical Counseling M.A. student) recently presented at the Illinois Psychological Association conference on “Effects of Tutoring to Educate for Aims and Motivation (TEAM) Program on Self-Esteem and Academic Motivation of Youth” under the supervision of Dr. Sayaka Machizawa. They received the Social Responsibility Award. This research team also brought their work to the 2009 American Psychological Association Convention in Toronto through a presentation titled Effects of a Structured Tutoring/Mentoring Program on Psychosocial Functioning of Minority Youth. This research is a collaborative project between The Chicago School, Erie House, Loyola University, and the University of Illinois–Chicago that is measuring the effectiveness of Erie House's mentoring program on the psychosocial functioning of youth. More specifically, the research aims to evaluate how the mentoring program impacts youth's self-esteem, motivation, sense of connectedness, and academic self-concept. The findings will be used for further improving the mentoring program to better support youth participants and facilitate healthy self-concept and academic success. Erie House, one of The Chicago School’s High Impact Partners, hosts approximately 25 Chicago School students per year who serve as mentors for their TEAM program.

o

Marissa Petersen, Sujata Swaroop (Clinical Psy.D. students), and Sarah Callow (Clinical Counseling M.A. student) presented at the National Faith, Justice, and Civic Learning Conference at DePaul University in June 25–27, 2009. Their presentation, titled Rwanda’s Sacred Vulnerability: How to Promote Resiliency in Women and Children, focuses on global responsibility to promote culturally-sensitive community interventions in Rwanda in order to accomplish true healing and the development of resiliency.

SoTL Institute: During the summer of 2009, the department chairs and faculty participated in the second annual Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Institute. The topic of the most recent institute was on enhancing academic excellence in Chicago School dissertations with regard to a) the rigor of research and its statistical analysis, and/or b) the quality of the writing. The institute provided a stimulating and practical menu of workshops from which faculty selected.

The Chicago School employs innovative teaching and supervision strategies both within and outside of the classroom.

While some of the examples listed below are not unique among other institutions, the rich combination of creative and unique pedagogical approaches at The Chicago School highlights the proposition of its distinct position within higher education.

•

ABA Instructional Design: The ABA Department offers training in Instructional Design as developed from B.F. Skinner's Radical Behaviorism perspective. This view visualizes behavior and its instruction along a seamless spectrum that begins with elements of operant and respondent conditioning and increases in size and complexity up through the most complex and extended individual and social behavior patterns. Although the field is very young, professionals using this approach to construct instructional sequences have encountered remarkable effectiveness and efficiency. These instructional sequences, and novel strategies derived from them, have been highly successful with children and adults with severe disabilities (e.g., autism) or milder disabilities, and behaviors that may be classified as motor, communication, cognitive, emotional, and social impairments. Notable examples of this approach include Layng's "Headsprout" program of early reading instruction, the Johnson-Layng Morningside Model of Generative Instruction, and Greer's Accelerated Independent Learner Model. Consistent with the core tenants of Applied Behavior Analysis, close and daily measurement of change drives the application of the model, both informing and requiring the practitioner to change tactics, curriculum elements, and procedures if the desired learning is not taking place. These data, in turn, are reported back to the field though regular scholarly works that allow continuous refinement of the model and its associated procedures.

•

Case-Based Teaching: Students learn through real case examples beginning in their first year, and this extends throughout their course of study by focusing on real cases encountered by the students in the community.

25

The Chicago School Model of Education

5.

Preparing Engaged Professionals

•

Simulated Scenarios: Student learning has been brought beyond the classroom through such activities as simulated hostage negotiations, mock-trials, the development of a model prison program, and other role play situations.

•

Individualized Research Mentorship: In preparing for their thesis defense, M.A. ABA students work closely with their chair to prepare a poster containing all the elements required for a professional presentation at a regional or national conference. At their defense, the students receive feedback from all faculty members, a subset of fellow students, faculty from other programs, and practicum site supervisors. Similarly, ABA students are expected to present graphed data in their weekly practicum class for faculty and peer review.

•

E-Portfolios: Some academic programs utilize electronic portfolios that contain sample pieces of academic work that, collectively, demonstrate that students have achieved the desired competencies of their academic program.

•

SAFMEDS—Say All Fast Minute Each Day Shuffle: The ABA programs use this teaching strategy for both clients and students. It requires that students verbally pair terms and definitions not just correctly, but also quickly.

For example, students may need to get through a set of 50 terms and definitions with no errors within one minute.

•

Center for Academic Excellence: With a mission to support and advance the learning that takes place within The Chicago School’s educational community, the CAE offers several services including: o

Academic Support Center: The Academic Support Center provides individual writing consultations, workshops and in-class presentations on critical thinking, reviews practicum and internship application packets, resource and language consultations for international students, and professional copy editing.

o

Academic Focus Program: This orientation program is delivered online and supplemented with face-to-face activities during program orientations in the fall. It prepares students for the demands of graduate-level academics, while introducing them to campus life and the college community. Students concentrate on academic writing for the psychology professional (content, formatting, grammar, citations), studying and critical thinking skills, managing schedules and academic stress, and creating a balanced and healthy student life.

o

Socratic Round Table: The Socratic Round Table is a forum for scholarly dialogue on important contemporary issues in psychological theory and practice.

o

Faculty Learning Lab: The Faculty Learning Lab creates opportunities for faculty to explore new approaches to teaching and learning. It supports the wise application of effective pedagogical tools in diverse learning environments as a means to creating transformative student learning experiences.

•

Online Library Tutorial: Like many other areas of the school, The Chicago School Library offers a variety of online resources and training modules to develop the information literacy of students and faculty.

•

Electronic Career Services Tools: Similarly, the Office of Career Services offers a variety of virtual learning experiences in which students can develop professional and high quality cover letters, resumes, and curriculum vitae, and they can even participate in simulated online interviews that can be recorded and reviewed with an advisor, peer, or Career Services professional.

The Chicago School remains highly innovative in its approach to diversity, and there is a strong integration of multiculturalism into the curriculum and emphasis on experiential learning.

•

Online Programming: The School’s online learning platform demonstrates to students other ways of learning and teaching, and online and blended programs attract more diverse student bodies. Mixing students in courses with no geographic boundaries increases diversity of thought, sharing of best practices, and critical thinking skills.

•

Diversity Programming: There are multiple, regular diversity activities and events offered on and off campus.

For example, the various diversity-related centers provide ongoing colloquia series; consultation to individual faculty, staff, and students; consultation to academic programs about curriculum design, teaching, and learning; publicize Chicago-area cultural events; sponsor diversity and cultural events; and warehouse teaching and learning resources on diversity (e.g., assessments and self-report tools on cultural awareness, cultural sensitivity, and racial identify; a library of reading pertaining to a variety of diversity issues; and media tools to facilitate classroom experiences).

•

International Trips: Events organized by the Center for International Studies brings students to new geographies and cultures, including recent trips to Bethlehem and the Middle East, China, Germany, and Sri Lanka.

26

The Chicago School Model of Education

6.

Preparing Engaged Professionals

•

Student and Faculty Exchanges: The school participated in faculty and student exchanges with Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and recently hosted a one-day workshop for a delegation of Iraqi youth workers through the State Department.

•

Organizations: The Chicago School is the headquarters for International School Psychology Association.

•

Future Search: Using the principles of Weisbord’s large group collaboration process, Drs. Nancy Newton and Nancy Davis conducted a one-and-a-half-day strategic planning session with 100 stakeholders—internal and external to the organization—to support a comprehensive community services center’s efforts to re-form their services.

•

International Programs: The school has been working to create a large-scale, online/blended counselor certification training program in partnership with the Rwandan government.

•

Practicum and Internship Training: The Chicago School partners with more than 500 local agencies to provide practical field placement experiences, and most of these agencies work with highly diverse and underserved populations.

•

Community Partnerships: Students participating in community engaged scholarship activities gain an increased understanding of the diverse needs in the communities, of social justice, and of civic responsibility.

The Chicago School demonstrates innovative student support and opportunities for professional development.

•

Academic Development Plans: The school has implemented a process to ensure the early identification and close tracking of academic and professional comportment concerns. Academic Development Plans (ADPs) are supportive, non-disciplinary learning tools that clarify areas in need of improvement, the learning activities that will help develop those competencies, and the ways in which the school will provide support.

•

Foundations: The Center for Academic Excellence “Foundations” program prepares incoming students for the challenges of graduate school, providing general academic preparatory experiences and a comprehensive writing assessment.

•

Ambassadors Club: Members of the Forensic Student Ambassadors Club promote the Department of Forensic Psychology, strive to enhance and promote opportunities for students, and raise awareness of the program and field within the community. Ambassadors are volunteer liaisons between the department and student body, working to achieve this mission by participating in department/school events and assisting with department activities as deemed necessary.

•

Data-Based Evaluation: The Applied Behavior Analysis Department utilizes a data-based system to evaluate the professional behavior of its students, and it uses behavioral principles to teach time management and effective study techniques.

27

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Appendix VII The Value of Community Assumptions The Chicago School has a “core community” that serves as the base for learning, and the modeling encountered in this learning community becomes reflected in the practice and professional behavior of students and faculty within the greater communities served. The interactions between members of The Chicago School and the extended community are intentional. They actively involve alumni and are critical to the student transformational process. Teaching and learning diversity requires a pluralistic philosophy that advances inclusion, social justice, and self-reflection. Community establishes the relevance of The Chicago School’s education, scholarship, and practice.

The Community value at The Chicago School has evolved as the school has changed and grown. Initially, it referred to the dedication of serving local communities in need. Although this dedication remains, the communities served have expanded to other areas in the United States, the world, and cyberspace. Simultaneously, The Chicago School community itself has developed into multifaceted campuses, departments, and programs, and is constantly shifting and changing. This obviously makes the community value a more complex idea to articulate. However, there were certain strong common assumptions that emerged from the program reviews that help describe what community means at The Chicago School.

The first assumption is that The Chicago School has a “core community” (i.e., The Chicago School learning community) that is the base for learning. This community is multilayered and consists of teachers, students, and staff, and includes all campuses and the departments within them. Closely connected are the school’s community partners, whether local or international, and again are ever-changing. The relationships within the core community serve as a model for the learning goals of Professional Practice and Professional Behavior.

Second, the interactions between and among the constituents of The Chicago School community are intentional and transformational. In the context of The Chicago School’s educational model, they are intentional because the purpose is to mentor students—who come with a multiplicity of pre-existing knowledge and experiences—to become professionals in their chosen field of study. They are transformational because students learn from faculty and staff at school, and they bring that knowledge to their applied studies in the field. In the process, they change both personally and professionally. These experiences are brought back to the school, contributing to the ever-evolving nature of the core community itself, and likewise returned to the communities in which they work.

Chicago School alumni represent a unique constituent in the process, as they are products of a Chicago School education, have unique backgrounds and experiences applying their learning in the community, and as such, present invaluable contributions to the community by serving as site supervisors, mentors, guest lecturers, and role models for both students and faculty.

The Chicago School faculty members also come from diverse personal and professional backgrounds, and they are expected to remain involved in professional practice in order to bring real community experiences into the classroom. They change in the process as well. In other words, both students and faculty learn and grow within the context of the core community and its associated external relationships, and there is a multi-directional transformational process in which faculty, students, and the community are constantly impacting and changing each other.

A third assumption is that learning professional practice and behavior in the classroom and community begins with a mindset that is open to diverse ideas, thoughts, and behaviors, and is connected to the needs of the people with whom our students and faculty work. From a community value perspective, the most effective way to teach and learn professional practice and behavior is through a pluralistic model that welcomes a diversity of views—as opposed to a single approach or methods of interpretation— and seeks reconciliation of difference, yet also seeks boundaries for inclusion based on shared values and ethics. For students, this method of professional development will ideally transfer into future thoughts, actions, and attitudes; an openness to other worldviews; and comfort and competence working in a variety of settings. Modeling is critical to this learning process and requires a core community that demonstrates such things as acceptance, sharing, cooperation, and collaboration.

Fourth, developing the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to understand and work with diversity is essential if one is to effectively work in varied communities, whether those are local, international, or virtual. As with Professional Practice and Behavior,

28

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

diversity should be taught by modeling attitudes and behaviors that advance inclusion, social justice, and self-awareness of how one’s own values and beliefs impact others.

Finally, while The Chicago School is fundamentally an academic learning community, the relevance of education is determined by the community. For example, community members do not teach or learn simply to exchange knowledge, skills, and attitudes; rather, they teach and learn to better society. Similarly, the institution seeks to advance faculty and student scholarship that reflect community needs and inform the work being done with its diverse inhabitants. Likewise, programs do not prepare people for a trade: they set out to prepare change agents that make positive contributions to the world.

Attitudes Chicago School faculty members believe that the challenges inherent in maintaining a cohesive core community in a rapidly growing organization present opportunities, though it requires constant change and a shared pluralistic philosophy. Mutual respect and the desire to collaborate in the core community are expected to transfer to skills ultimately applied with external constituents. Diversity is seen as a central part of this learning process, as a diverse community ensures diversity of thought, and it requires both breadth and depth to truly meet community needs. Alumni are seen as a unique and critical part of the diverse Chicago School community who can provide a wide range of learning and mentoring experiences to students. Education, scholarship, and practice should all benefit the community, and professionals need a solid foundation in established theory as well as an evidence-based approach in order to adapt their knowledge, skills, and attitudes to succeed in “real-world” situations.

Although the multifaceted nature of The Chicago School learning community and its rapid growth have challenged cohesion within the core community, faculty members express a primary attitude of viewing this challenge as an opportunity to demonstrate and teach collaborative and cooperative work across space and points of view. Joint efforts between departments are directed toward serving communities in need (local, national, international, virtual) and developing solutions to the human problems encountered. The Chicago School Model includes a continuous weighing of its strengths and opportunities and an examination of the interactions between them. This balance is in constant change as The Chicago School develops and as the needs of the outside world evolve.

In this ongoing and complex dynamic, the faculty clearly express that there is no one central “right way;” rather, there is appreciation and respect for the presence of multiple, valid belief systems. The model requires a united core community within The Chicago School that shares expectations and resources while maintaining individual identities and goals. No department should hold privilege over another, and frequent opportunities to work together on shared projects are viewed as a great equalizer. The faculty members believe that maintaining cohesion during rapid expansion has resulted from their basic attitude of respect for varying values and a genuine desire to collaborate. Additionally, they purport that learning to think, work, and grow in this type of environment will transfer to valuable professional practice and behavior skill sets in their students and ultimately into the greater communities they serve. In this light, there is an attitude to establish and maintain high professional behavior standards along with a strong commitment to remediate students, faculty, or staff that do not demonstrate desired professional comportment within any of the learning communities.

There is also a strong attitude that diversity is a central part of the community value and that becoming a multiculturally proficient practitioner is a lifelong endeavor. Teaching diversity is viewed as multilayered, and the foundation rests upon learning experiences that build awareness of self and others. Students are taught to see themselves as socio-cultural beings and identify the impact of their own worldviews, cultural privilege, and biases within cross-cultural communities. Faculty members value cross-program exchanges that provide students the opportunity to experience diverse ideas in the classroom, and they support both focused diversity courses that are required of all students as well as the integration of diversity across the entire curriculum.

Alumni are seen as bringing a unique element of diversity into the learning community. In addition to the diversity they bring in terms of their backgrounds, they represent a rich vault of experiences applying their Chicago School education in the community, and they can help train, mentor, and model the application of their trade in the real world.

Consistent with institutional assumptions, Chicago School faculty members believe that knowledge, scholarship, and practice should benefit external communities, both local and global. With an attitude of “one needs to know the rules in order to change them,” there is a strong commitment to teaching classic theory. Yet, there is an appreciation that applying traditional models in diverse situations requires evidence-based modification in order to adapt them to the communities and people served and ongoing assessment to evaluate effectiveness.

29

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Actualities 1.

The Chicago School provides opportunities for transformational learning experiences through engagement in the community.

•

2.

3.

4.

Practica, Internships, and Community Engaged Scholarship: Students complete community service, service learning, community-based scholarship, practica, and internship experiences in the community, and such engagements are designed to be intentionally transformational. Learning and changing outside of the classroom, students return to campus to analyze and share their experiences. Similarly, faculty members practice their disciplines in the community and bring their hands-on experiences and growth back to the classroom. Through these exchanges, academics inform practice in the community, and practice in the community informs academics.

In the process, both students and faculty continuously transform themselves into increasingly more competent and engaged professionals.

Reciprocal relationships with community stakeholders create mutually beneficial outcomes for all parties involved.

•

Community Engaged Academic Centers: Engagement transforms students and faculty who, in turn, transform communities. Programs such as the Center for Latino Mental Health and the Forensic Center link the campus to communities with the intent of altering the community in beneficial ways.

•

Community Partnerships: In addition, the school’s programs aim to serve the community by specifically targeting underserved populations. For example, the Office of Community Partnerships places students in community engaged scholarship activities within walking distance from the campuses to the distant suburbs, participating in activities such as needs assessments; quantitative and qualitative research; strategic planning; program development and evaluation; outcome measurement; leadership development; staff training; and direct community service, including literacy training, mentorship programs, job search preparation and training, and numerous types of wellness programs. The goal driving these programs is that through community engagement, students transform themselves while transforming communities. This interplay now stands as a hallmark of The Chicago School Model of Education.

Inclusiveness and pluralism promote an engaged learning community.

•

Pluralistic Learning Community: The pluralistic environment on campus is a result of the reciprocal relationships the school established with its internal and external constituents. Faculty, staff, and administration have created an open and inclusive mindset within the core community, and the exposure and free exchange of ideas through open internal and external channels creates a dynamic and accepting atmosphere in which transformational learning occurs.

•

Diversity and International Initiatives: The Cultural Impact Conference is clear evidence of The Chicago School’s commitment to diversity of thought and the sharing of ideas between its core community and external constituents. The inclusion of multiple beliefs is also evidenced by the many international projects and experiences available to students and faculty, including trips abroad and the collaborative development of training programs in places such as China, Sri Lanka, and Rwanda.

•

Student Groups: A recent increase in student special interest groups, such as the Social Justice Group, PRIDE, International Student Group, African-American Student Association, and Friends of Latino Students represent several ways in which faculty and students have worked together to manifest an environment of support of inclusion.

Engagement is expanding the reach of The Chicago School programs. Understanding that its relevancy exists only through is relation to its communities, The Chicago School is redefining disciplines by creating programs that place students and faculty in non-traditional settings.

•

International Programming: The international programs described above demonstrate how the school is placing students, faculty, and alumni into new geographies and equipping them with the critical skills needed to effectively practice in the global marketplace.

•

Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Academic and Community Leadership: The school’s Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Academic and Community Leadership trains fellows for unique leadership roles in academics and the community.

30

The Chicago School Model of Education

•

5.

Preparing Engaged Professionals

The Academic Programs and Centers: The Forensic Psychology Department has extended the school’s reach into the legal system and courts, jails and prisons, and advocacy agencies. The School Psychology program places graduates into public and private schools as leaders and change agents. The Applied Behavior Analysis program is responding to increasing national trends of autism and developmental disabilities, and students are likewise prepared to use their skills in business and educational environments. The International Psychology program is preparing graduates to work with populations traumatized by conflict and war and to work effectively in government, non-governmental organizations, and humanitarian relief. The Business Psychology Department places students in a wide variety of agencies and businesses to maximize performance and effectively guide organizations and individuals toward success. The Center for Latino Mental Health is specifically preparing professionals to meet the needs of the Latino/a population. The newly established Veterans Psychological Health Center is providing services to the increasing number of people who have served the country in war yet cannot access the services they desperately need. Collectively, these offerings not only meet the needs of the community, they identify what the needs are. The Chicago School is defining where the professions are headed.

The Chicago School engages with its alumni to enhance the educational experience and to build communities.

•

Alumni Relations: Though it strives to do more, The Chicago School attempts to maintain positive and mutually beneficial relationships with its valued alumni. In addition to ensuring regular correspondence, receipt of Insight: The Magazine for Alumni and Friends of The Chicago School (recipient of the 2008 Follio Ozzie Gold Winner as the best new magazine published by a nonprofit organization), and participation in annual advancement efforts, different areas of the school have found unique ways to involve alumni in the current student’s education. For example, the Office of Clinical Services had nine alumni present at the post-doctoral training program in Community Academic Leadership’s Grand Rounds lecture series during the 2008-2009 academic year. The Office of Community Partnerships has students working directly with about ten alumni in community engaged scholarship activities. Dozens of alumni likewise work with Chicago School students as part of their practica and internship training. The Office of Career Services outreached to alumni to participate in Career Week 2008, including involving them in networking roundtables, site supervisor panel discussions, and on-campus employee recruitment events. Several key administrative positions in the institution are held by Chicago School alumni, and they represent an appropriate proportion of the school’s administrative, professional, program, affiliate, and adjunct faculty.

31

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Appendix VIII The Value of Service Assumptions Applied professional experiences provide the opportunity to develop the requisite knowledge, skills, and attitudes in order to meet the needs of the people ultimately being served. The engagement between the provider and the recipient of services is mutually beneficial, as both benefit through their interactions. The Chicago School seeks to prepare graduates who can apply their discipline to help individual citizens as well as impact larger social systems and policies.

The Chicago School’s Model of Education is based on the assumption that applied experience is an essential component of professional training. Only through applied experience do students have the opportunity to develop direct knowledge of the attitudes, values, and life experiences of the people they are being trained to serve. Applied experience is the training ground for learning the “art” of practice and scholarship with diverse, real-world clients, whether those are individuals, families, organizations, or communities. By integrating these experiences with didactic learning and supervision, students have the opportunity to develop knowledge, skills, and attitudes by learning from their own experiences and honing their ability to adapt theory/research-based ideas and principles to unique situations that cannot be taught in the classroom.

Engaging in applied experiences also enables students to be of service within their communities. Traditionally, graduate education has focused on the benefits that applied experiences bring to students. The Chicago School, however, recognizes that the relationship is balanced and reciprocal. Optimal applied experiences serve the needs of both the community and the needs of students.

The Chicago School assumes that “ethical” practitioners are committed to serving the well-being of all citizens through traditional contributions of their discipline, as well as engaging in activities that impact larger social systems and public policies. From the service value of The Chicago School, therefore, the breadth and depth of the professional behavior learning goal extends to include personal, social, civic, and global responsibility.

Attitudes The Chicago School faculty members deeply value how service in community generates collaborative learning relationships between the school and its external constituents. In addition to traditional practica and internships, student and faculty engagement through community scholarship (e.g., community service, service learning, and community-based research) is seen as the model approach to preparing students and meeting community needs in ways not otherwise possible.

The core attitude that shapes faculty and student involvement in applied learning/service experiences is that of “service IN community.” While professionals possess knowledge, skills, and attitudes that can be of benefit, members of the community have equally valuable lessons to teach faculty and students. It is this attitude that provides the foundation for collaborative relationships and partnerships that facilitate personal development and well-being of all participants of the interchange.

The model of community engaged scholarship provides the best framework for expression of this attitude. Community service, service learning, and community engaged scholarship provide a wide range of professional activities in which students and faculty lend expertise to help partner agencies achieve goals they could not otherwise realize. At the same time, collaboration with these partner agencies provides opportunities for students and faculty to grapple with the realities that challenge application of a particular discipline in the real word.

Actualities 1.

Practica and internships are the traditional means by which students engage in applied learning, and The Chicago School takes seriously the importance of providing rich field experiences through formal training programs in the community and within the school. Practicum and internship training requirements are established to meet relevant

32

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

licensure or certification requirements based upon the highest standards of the field. Each of the 500+ training sites utilized across the campuses must be approved by the school, develop agreements that articulate expectations and learning goals, provide an appropriate amount of high quality on-site supervision, complete regular evaluations of students, and allow students to evaluate them after the training experience. Close academic oversight is ensured through concomitant on-campus seminars led by department faculty members. Some of the more unique field placement opportunities include:

2.

•

Apna Ghar: This site offers students direct experience in court advocacy with victims of domestic violence. In particular, students work with diverse immigrant populations and are therefore additionally exposed to legal proceedings concerning amnesty and citizenship. Students also have opportunities to engage in outreach programming in the community and fund-raising for non-profit organizations.

•

Children's Advocacy Center (CAC)–North and Northwest Cook County: CAC provides students with opportunities to engage in clinical work with victims of sexual abuse, as well as participate in court proceedings as an advocate. This training site therefore provides students with unique perspective regarding the interface between law and psychology.

•

First Chicago Neuroscience Center: Students have the ability to engage in groundbreaking techniques and research with program faculty member Dr. Lucasz Konopka in making neuroscience an applied discipline.

Students gain experience working with a variety of patients and diagnostic instruments including neuropsychological testing, biofeedback, and qEEG in order to bridge the gap between academia and professional practice.

•

Georgemiller, Whyte & Associates: With supervision provided by Community Partnerships’ Associate Director, Dr. Sayaka Machizawa, students at this site are offered an intense experience in neuropsychological testing— specifically "high stake" testing—that goes far beyond what is typically encountered in psychological assessment training. For example, students test patients to determine disabilities under Illinois statutes and work with airline pilots in fitness for duty evaluations.

•

Kane County Adult Corrections: This site allows students to participate in mental health court in addition to training in a correctional setting. As such, it provides vast exposure to many facets of forensic psychology.

•

Lawrence Hall Youth Services (LHYS): Lawrence Hall is non-profit child welfare agency that provides trainees with a wide range of opportunities to enhance their learning and skill development with court-involved youth.

Students are trained to incorporate Balanced and Restorative Justice practices in their work, which has increased internationally-wide support in taking a more holistic approach with juveniles. Additionally, LHYS is one of the few residential treatment facilities that provide specialized LGBTQ programming to their clients, and students can receive specialized training to work with these community members as well.

•

Trialgraphix: A placement for non-licensure seeking Forensic Psychology students, Trialgraphix trains students to participate in trial consulting and jury selection, a highly unique subspecialty within the field of forensic psychology.

•

University of Illinois at Chicago–Institute for Juvenile Research (Disruptive Behavior Clinic): Under the supervision Dr. Jaleel Abdul-Adil, Clinical Psy.D. program faculty member, students have significant opportunities to engage as clinicians and scholars. They gain clinical experience that is well integrated in ground-breaking research and empirical evidence, working to assist highly diverse and at-risk youth.

•

Wings Program, Inc: This domestic violence agency provides students with a wealth of learning experiences through their rotations and training in crisis intervention and domestic violence, and developing skills in moving women towards independence. Students learn a global perspective of domestic violence by working with Coordinators of Supportive Services and Family Enrichment Specialists to provide one-on-one therapeutic services with the women and children victims that the agency serves, including counseling services and familyfocused activities.

Committed to increasing the number and quality of training experiences available to its students, The Chicago School has developed numerous training positions of its own: •

Southern California Counseling Centers: The Chicago School’s Southern California Counseling Centers are among California’s largest and most successful counseling centers with locations in Westwood and Irvine. The Southern California Counseling Centers have been providing psychotherapy and counseling

33

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

services that are affordable and accessible to the communities they serve for more than 35 years. Clinical services provided include: psychological testing and reports; individual, couple, family, and group psychotherapy; community outreach and education; off-site EAP services; substance abuse treatment; and domestic violence treatment. Plans for the Southern California Counseling Centers include the expansion of the substance abuse outpatient program, older adult program, trauma treatment, and a child and adolescent outpatient program. In addition, Chicago School students are afforded the opportunity for in-house clinical placements at the centers. Psychology practicum trainees, pre-doctoral interns, and postdoctoral fellows, as well as MFT trainees and interns, are supervised by a licensed and experienced staff of clinical psychologists and marital and family therapists.

•

3.

The Chicago School has supported the development of service programs across the school in which applied learning takes place in real time.

•

4.

5.

Chicago Training Consortium: The Chicago Campus has built its own training program in partnership with local agencies. Under faculty supervision, Clinical Psy.D. practicum students provide the student counseling functions for two Chicago-area professional schools, John Marshall Law School and Harrington College of Design. The school’s pre-doctoral internship offers opportunities to provide supervised clinical work in the community while receiving additional training and instruction on-campus. Similarly, the postdoctoral program in Community Academic Leadership draws recent graduates from the school and around the country to spend half of their time in the community providing clinical services and the other half in administrative positions at the school in order to teach the importance of linking institutions of higher learning with the community to create sustainable change.

Centers and Schools: The forensic program developed the Forensic Center, the clinical doctoral program instituted the Center for Latino Mental Health, and the ABA program developed a contract school within the Chicago Public School system. Each of these programs has been designed to provide community service and training opportunities for students under the direction and supervision of Chicago School faculty.

When appropriate, applied learning opportunities are directly incorporated into coursework in the form of service learning.

•

Teacher Aides: The School Psychology program requires first-year students to volunteer as Teacher Aides for two semesters as part of their Professional Development seminars.

•

Business Consulting: Master’s students in the I/O program directly apply the concepts and skills they learn in their Consulting Psychology course by developing proposals to address organizational issues proposed by partner social service agencies, and they can implement their proposals as paid internship experiences through Federal Work Study funding.

•

Leadership Assessment: Doctoral students in the Business Psychology program provide competencybased leadership assessments for managers and executives in social service agencies as a component of their Individual Assessment course.

An essential component of providing applied, “service IN community” experiences is the development of partnerships between the school and community organizations. The Office of Community Partnerships actively works to build and maintain such relationships, and it provides a structure that facilitates the connection between Chicago School students/faculty and the community so that they can identify and deliver meaningful service opportunities.

•

Community Partnerships: Currently, The Chicago School has relationships with more than 40 community organizations, including social service organizations (Erie Neighborhood House, Chicago Youth Centers), academic settings (Harold Washington College, Rachel Carson Elementary School), medical centers (Alivio Medical Center) and mental health organizations (Josselyn Center). Project positions range from clinical support services (Psycho-Educational Group Co-Facilitator, Guidance Counselor) to research opportunities (Program Evaluation Researcher) to organizational support (Human Resource Assistant, Behavioral Health Depression Task Force Assistant), and to other adjunctive support positions (Waiting Room Monitor, Program Aide). The learning experiences of students are furthered through involvement in on-campus selfreflection seminars that heighten awareness of community needs and develop civic responsibility.

34

The Chicago School Model of Education

6.

7.

8.

Preparing Engaged Professionals

A variety of student organizations have been established to provide interested students with opportunities to serve the community. These organizations promote volunteer opportunities and encourage consideration and understanding of social policy in professional practice. A few examples include: •

Chicago School Student Association: The CSSA posts volunteer opportunities on its website and provides funding to its member student organizations to host their own social action events.

•

Community Activism Committee: This student group housed in the Center for Multicultural and Diversity Studies selects volunteer efforts that address the needs of diverse populations. As a group, the committee provides services to the greater Chicagoland area while informing the school of relevant issues within the community, encouraging interaction with peers and members of different backgrounds, advising on course curriculum, and providing meaningful social engagement through service.

•

Social Justice Group: The SJG is a voluntary student interest group organized to discuss, learn, read, explore, organize, and participate in the various ways that professionals can bring their knowledge and skills to counter injustice and promote greater equality in society. Group members seek to educate themselves and colleagues about issues of injustice, including racism, classism, sexism, prejudice, militarism, economic exploitation, and relations of dominance. In addition, they seek to learn how to contribute as professionals and citizens to the betterment of individuals and society in ways that are consistent with principles of fairness, human dignity, and compassionate concern for others.

The Chicago School encourages faculty and students to generate scholarship on topics important to improving the health and well-being of people in the community. The Office of Community Partnerships actively works to identify research opportunities with community partners, including needs analyses, organizational assessments, and program developments and evaluations.

•

Community-Based Scholarship: For example, Dr. John Shustitsky, faculty member in the Clinical Psy.D. program and CEO of a comprehensive community mental health center, provides opportunities for dissertation projects at his center.

•

Media Consultations: Faculty members regularly contribute their knowledge on current events to newspaper, TV, and radio stories.

•

Conferences: The annual Cultural Impact Conference brings professionals from across the country together to explore ideas, share research, and discuss best practices in multicultural psychology in a scholarly manner. Under Chicago School oversight, The Naomi Cohen Charitable Foundation provides education to the public and the professional community on a variety of issues related to mental health, particularly in the area of stigma.

Faculty members play a key role in modeling community service, as well as supporting and mentoring students. The Chicago School acknowledges, values, and supports such service, as it provides faculty release time to engage in these activities, and it is an essential requirement for promotion and retention.

•

Faculty Supervision: Faculty members provide direct supervision for many on-site and off-site practicum, internship, and community engaged scholarship opportunities.

•

Collaborative Service Provision: Working side by side with students in the applied programs offered at The Chicago School, faculty members likewise model community service through their own professional roles and engagements.

•

Collaborative Scholarship: In addition, students and faculty work collaboratively on in-service presentations and consultations to community agencies, workshops, and trainings.

35

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Appendix IX The Learning Goal of Professional Practice Assumptions The Chicago School prepares students for the future and to be competitive in the marketplace through expert teacherspractitioners and applied learning experiences. The institution seeks to advance the understanding and to expand the reach of professional disciplines into new sectors, populations, and geographies. With a primary goal to train ethical and competent practitioners, Chicago School students are closely mentored to become leading professionals and directly engage themselves in the community to develop self-awareness, career goals, social awareness, and civic responsibility. In the process, they discover their call to service and the true impact they can have on the world.

The Chicago School seeks to prepare students for the future by equipping them with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that will make them competitive in the marketplace; obtain relevant licensures, certifications, or other professional designations; and engage in lifelong learning to advance themselves personally and professionally. In the belief that practitioner faculty are best able to teach the application of any discipline, the school recruits, retains, and promotes educators that simultaneously engage in practice and bring their real-world experience into the classroom. Similarly, the institution purports that the most powerful learning occurs through application, and therefore embeds its programs with various practical educational experiences.

Through innovative degree programs, The Chicago School is able to advance existing definitions of its fields of study. Likewise, it is the means through which the school can expand the reach of applied disciplines. In other words, challenging traditional assumptions and limitations of a profession creates unique ways to bring professional practices into new sectors, populations, and geographies in order to better meet community and market needs.

A primary objective of the institution is to train competent and ethical providers of professional services. Engaging students in a variety of service-related activities such as practica, internships, community service, applied field research, and service learning, prepares Chicago School graduates with a higher level of skill and more robust resumes than found in graduates of other schools. In the process, students learn to act professionally, gain self-awareness, identify career opportunities and paths, understand real community needs, and develop a deep sense of civic responsibility.

In order to be meaningful and effective, professional practice must be learned in the context of community. Internally, The Chicago School utilizes teaching, modeling, and mentoring to help students become leading practitioners. As apprentices, students are exposed to numerous practitioner faculty members who demonstrate multicultural proficiency, inclusiveness, cooperation, collaboration, and ethical professionalism. Externally, the community serves as the school’s training laboratory.

Here, students learn about real needs to which they can contribute, meet the people who they ultimately serve, see how systems and politics work both for and against people, and, perhaps most importantly, identify how they can truly make a difference.

Attitudes Seeing themselves as gatekeepers to the professions, The Chicago School faculty establishes high professional standards and strives to impart evidence-based practices to prepare highly qualified and ethical service agents. Embracing innovation as a means to improve both teaching and learning, members seek creative ways to engage students in the role of service providers who have a deep respect for and proficiency in working with diversity and difference. Chicago School faculty members embrace their responsibilities to educate and mentor the next generation of professionals, but they also understand the transformative learning and reciprocal benefits of partnering with experts in the community in preparing their students for independent practice.

Chicago School faculty members see themselves as master educators and practitioners, a combination they believe is necessary to transform students into professionals. Setting very high practice standards, the faculty embraces its roll as the gatekeepers to the professions, and they only wish to graduate highly qualified, proficient, and ethical service agents who they will be proud to call colleagues. In the broad sense, teaching students empirically-based approaches to practice is viewed as the gold standard. In other words, there is consensus that all teaching modalities should impart the need to continuously evaluate the effectiveness of one’s interventions from multicultural and contextually relevant perspectives. Finally, The Chicago School faculty

36

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

members expressed interest in finding ways to teach students the required skills for a lifelong commitment to service-related work; namely, they understand the importance of imparting a variety of life skills and self-care strategies that can help maintain personal wellness in the very challenging work in which students are preparing to engage.

Innovation permeates The Chicago School learning community, and it is approached as a powerful tool to effect change. From a pedagogical perspective, faculty members expressed their belief that innovation improves teaching as well as educational outcomes. Likewise, they identified how innovative programs are “fleet footed” and tend not to get mired in policies and procedures often found at other institutions. Reflective of the value that the institution places on thinking and acting creatively, faculty members feel supported, encouraged, and even expected to innovate in the area of teaching and practice. In general, there appears to be a strong desire for faculty and staff to have more time to innovate as well as more training and direction on how to do so.

The Chicago School faculty put forth its belief that service should be a requisite element of a professional’s identity. Therefore, there is a growing enthusiasm to increase the amount of educational offerings that put students in the role of a provider, particularly in service learning offerings and high-impact cross-disciplinary teams under faculty leadership that meet the needs of partner agencies. Faculty members also believe that it is their responsibility to help connect themselves, the institution, and students to the community through creating and supervising applied learning and research activities, encouraging participation in professional organizations, and modeling reciprocal and mutually beneficial relationships between those who give and receive service. Finally, The Chicago School faculty identified the challenges it faces in bringing professional practice to an everdiversifying world. Members highlighted the need to acknowledge the existence and validity of different cultural perspectives and traditions, because serving others from a position of power—even simply the power of education—will likely fail or may even cause harm if delivered in a manner incongruent with true community needs.

The Chicago School faculty understands that all learning occurs in a context, and the context for Chicago School teachers and learners is that of community. Learning within communities, both internal and external, fosters meaning, relevancy, and ultimately, the responsible and effective application of a discipline toward the betterment of society. Internally, faculty members embrace the awesome responsibility to teach and model what it means to be a professional practitioner, particularly as it relates to the other learning goals of Diversity, Scholarship, and Professional Behavior. Externally, partner agencies are entrusted to expose, teach, supervise, mentor, and evaluate the development of Chicago School students operating in real time in the real world. Recognizing the critical responsibility shared between internal and external professionals, the faculty values the reciprocity gained through shared student oversight. For example, there is confidence that Chicago School students extend their learning into partner agencies. Likewise, outside professionals evaluate student performance, and those results are used to make curricular adjustments.

Actualities 1.

Students have the opportunity to partake in numerous field placement opportunities offered both outside and within the school that expose them to a wide range of practice opportunities with diverse populations.

•

Practica and Internships: With more than 500 practicum sites across the campuses, students have a myriad of opportunities to receive closely supervised training in the community with seasoned, practicing professionals.

•

BCBA Distance Supervision: Applied Behavior Analysis students have the change to participate in a “semester away” practicum placement. This allows them the opportunity to work with behavior analysts who specialize in particular service areas, such as the application of behavioral technology to improve the lives of individuals with traumatic brain injury. In an effort to make it easier for students to take advantage of these opportunities, the program offers distance group supervision hours and several courses online. The confluence of these variables help students network with other behavior analysts, obtain valuable experience that often leads to their thesis research, and many times creates job opportunities after graduation.

•

ABA Contract Schools and Other Applied Community Learning Experience: The Applied Behavior Analysis Department established the school’s presence in public elementary schools, high schools, special education classrooms, inclusion programs, and cooperative schools. Students and faculty staff these programs, serving people with and without disabilities through sophisticated instructional programs that target a full continuum of life and academic skills, ranging from basic “activities of daily life” (ADLs) to learning to speak to traditional academics such as reading and math. The program also places students in private home-based and center-based programs,

37

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

including private and public day and residential treatment, to learn the skills necessary to work with people of all ages and with a wide range of disabilities.

•

2.

3.

The Forensic Center: As the practice arm of the Department of Forensic Psychology, The Chicago School Forensic Center brings students together with local organizations on projects that bolster hands-on learning experiences while addressing unmet needs in the community. Students benefit from the opportunity to put classroom instruction into practice in real-world settings that range from the Juvenile Probation and Court Services Department of Cook County and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Service agencies to women’s shelters and programs for ex-offenders.

The Chicago School offers highly innovative learning experiences in which student work is directly observed, developed, and evaluated.

•

Hostage Negotiation Scenario and Mock Trial Capstone: Students in the Forensic program’s Hostage Negotiations course participate in a live, simulated hostage scenario in which the classroom knowledge is put to the test in real time. Similarly, at the conclusion of the Forensic Documentation, Report Writing, and Testifying course, forensic students engage in a mock trial by providing expert testimony with actual attorneys and judges who participate in evaluating students’ performance.

•

Parent–Child Interaction Therapy: As part of service the learning courses Empirically Based Treatment I & II, forensic students work directly with families involved in the juvenile court system by providing Parent–Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT). Their work is supervised through a one-way mirror by faculty members and peers, and feedback is provided to the student through the use of an ear bud. This type of live supervision allows students the opportunity to hear immediately how a licensed practicing professional would respond and adjust during actual treatment sessions.

•

Chicago School Clinics: At the Chicago Campus, the Clinical Services Department has created nationally and internationally known consortia with partner human service agencies that offer practicum, pre-doctoral internship, and postdoctoral training opportunities. The Southern California clinics offer several dozen training opportunities for students while providing a wide range of services to the community.

•

Community Partnership Faculty/Student Teams: Through action-oriented scholarship and a balanced focus on service and learning, the Office of Community Partnership strives to create an equal and mutually beneficial collaboration between the school, the students, and the community partners to increase the propensity to practice in more civically engaged and socially justice minded ways. Working with approximately 40 agencies in and around Chicago, groups of students under faculty leadership help community organizations build capacity and improve the quality of their services by providing direct service, training, supervision, and research. The community organizations in turn provide meaningful service experiences through which students can acquire civic understanding and career-related skills. For example, recently three separate student-faculty teams worked with Lawrence Hall Youth Services to 1) conduct a comprehensive needs analysis across the entire organization, 2) design a cutting edge youth residential treatment model, and 3) research relevant change management literature to help the agency’s administration introduce the teams’ recommended changes.

The Chicago School values and supports the generation of scholarly works that can be applied and demonstrates students’ readiness to enter engaged professional practice.

•

Applied Scholarship: The Chicago School embraces a broad definition of scholarship, and it encourages students to engage in research that can be applied in real-world settings. This includes but is not limited to program development, program evaluation design, test construction or norm development, development of grant proposals, and public policy or legislative analysis. For example, Laura Granros, a school psychology student, developed the idea of her Storyworks program in the Statistics and Program Evaluation course. In order to actually build it, she applied for and won an Albert Schweitzer Fellowship that helps graduate students dedicate their time and service to underserved communities. This award allowed Laura the opportunity to develop a program that can be implemented in schools and other community agencies. Based upon literature that interactive activities have academic as well as social and emotional benefits for children, her program encourages oftentimes traumatized youth to share narratives and artwork with positive role models in order to improve communication, social skills, and coping skills. The resulting dialogues help children make social predictions, apply lessons to personal experiences, and build relationships, and the creative nature of the activities allow them a safe forum to more readily talk about difficult issues and, in the process, learn about themselves. The program is currently being

38

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

run and developed at the Rachel Carson Elementary School and consists of weekly shared-book reading sessions with Chicago School student volunteers that focus on themes such as self-esteem and anger management.

4.

•

Applied Research Projects: The online degree programs require students to apply their learning directly to the workplace, using assessment, projects, and other measures to ensure practical, application-based learning. For example, all students complete an Applied Research Project that generates the application of classroom learning to an authentic workplace situation. Michael Lange (Online Campus M.A. in Applied Forensic Services student and Lake Forest, Illinois, police officer) recently completed his project: “A Training Module for Law Enforcement Officers: Dealing with Subjects with Mental Disorders.” His program provides training to frontline officers to properly resolve incidents involving people with mental disorders and thereby increase safety for all involved.

While it is designed to increase officers’ confidence and knowledge, it more importantly equips these public servants with effective tools that can be deployed in the field.

•

e-Portfolios: Electronic Portfolios (e-Portfolios) is a file storage system that enables students to plan, reflect upon, gain feedback, and publish evidence of what they have learned in their graduate programs. Using the learning goals and program competencies required by their respective programs as a base, students in certain programs are required to gather examples of what they have learned at The Chicago School. A completed ePortfolio enables the program to demonstrate that students have met program competencies and allows students the ability to demonstrate their accomplishments as a professional-in-training.

The Chicago School pays particular attention to supporting and training students in the area of multiculturalism and diversity.

•

Multicultural Mentoring Program: The Multicultural Mentoring Program is based on a community mentoring model that creates opportunities for students to connect with faculty and staff around issues of diversity and professional success. Examples of recent programs include workshops on Getting the Most Out of Mentoring and Navigating Social Identities in Professional Development.

•

Multicultural Training and Consultation: The Center for Multicultural and Diversity Studies develops and delivers multicultural training and consultation internally to the constituents of The Chicago School as well as to community human and social service agencies. Examples include Diversity Workshops for TCS Staff, Developing Multicultural Competence for Students at TCS, and Cultural Sensitivity Training.

39

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Appendix X The Learning Goal of Scholarship Assumptions The Chicago School holds that professionals apply scholarship in real time and that traditional research methodologies are replicated into an evidence-based approach to practice. The school embraces a broad definition of scholarship, supporting different scholarly activities across and between academic programs, yet still demands standards that ensure adequate rigor, quality, relevancy, and impact. The institution promotes innovation in scholarship and seeks faculty who can model and mentor unique approaches in knowledge discovery, teaching, and professional practice.

The major assumption underlying the learning goal of scholarship is that professionals apply scholarship in real time. In an effort to support the goal of scholarship in practice, students learn how to generate new knowledge (e.g., theses, dissertations, applied research projects) and consume existing research (e.g., reading, discussing, and integrating scholarly sources) under close instruction and supervision. They learn the importance of staying current in the literature related to their chosen discipline, and they are subsequently able to generalize the research process to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of their practice. As a result, graduates are prepared to replicate, extend, and adapt evidence-based practices to produce meaningful change in the lives of the individuals they serve and in the communities in which they work. For example, students are commonly expected to match the needs of a client to an intervention extracted from a recently read journal article. Students then apply those methods in real-world settings, evaluate the effectiveness of their interventions, and adjust their practice accordingly. In the process, students also learn the need to approach their discipline as lifelong learners, constantly engaging in the endless recursive interplay between scholarship and practice.

The Chicago School embraces a broad definition of scholarship that welcomes the scholarships of discovery, integration, application, and teaching. Within this context, different definitions of scholarship and research co-exist within and between academic departments. This is evident in the variability of student thesis and dissertation research proposals submitted to The Chicago School Institutional Review Board (IRB). The range of proposed studies includes single-subject design studies with multiple replications across participants or behaviors, survey research, and program development and evaluation. While types of scholarship can and should vary, there is also a need for established standards to ensure adequate rigor, quality, relevancy, and impact.

The Chicago School seeks to advance innovative scholarship. Therefore, the school intentionally recruits, retains, and promotes faculty who demonstrate innovations in research and subsequently teaching and service. By supporting innovative scholarship, faculty members function as lifelong learners who strive to incorporate this in their pedagogy and practice. Consequently, the interaction between faculty scholarship, teaching, and professional practice sets the standard by which the school trains its students.

Attitudes While not required to engage in traditional research that leads to publication, The Chicago School faculty expects it members to participate in some type of scholarly activity that values research and addresses relevant community needs. They seek to infuse their attitudes around scholarship and its relation to practice and teaching through modeling, mentorship, and collaboration.

Finally, they seek an institutional definition of scholarship that incorporates divergent perspectives and reduces a perceived “scholar” versus “practitioner” divide, and they express an interest in benchmarking the innovativeness of Chicago School scholarship to other institutions of higher learning.

The faculty sees The Chicago School encouraging, rather than requiring, traditional research that leads to publication. However, they support the expectation that all faculty members should routinely engage in some form of scholarship as described above.

For example, the faculty believes that instructors should take a scholarly approach to their teaching, course construction, and their own practice activities.

40

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Like the institution, faculty also value innovation in scholarship, especially if it creates or extends previous research that can help solve relevant problems in the community or within the school. They appreciate and desire increased incentives to engage in scholarship, including both monetary support and time, and believe that these activities should factor into decisions regarding promotion. The faculty recognizes and welcomes recent initiatives that help them develop their scholarship of teaching, including the addition of faculty developers onto the staff and the annual Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Faculty Institute Day. The Chicago School faculty seeks to transfer its attitude to students through modeling, mentorship, and encouragement to conduct and apply scholarship that makes immediate, practical differences. Often, this takes place outside of the classroom in community engaged research faculty/student project teams that generate pragmatic benefits for community agencies and the populations they serve. Numerous other opportunities exist for students to involve themselves in scholarship activities, including course assignments that must meet publication standards, white papers, dissertations and theses, and applied research projects.

Faculty members value opportunities that directly involve students in their personal scholarship activities and/or by closely monitoring student research. The learning that can occur through these mentoring collaborations is seen as an important bridge between service and scholarship. This likewise supports the contention that service is the medium through which applied scholarship is defined.

Because the institution has not articulated an overarching definition of scholarship that adequately incorporates divergent opinions on what constitutes research, faculty members report an ongoing split between those who define themselves primarily as “scholars” versus “practitioners.” Additionally, they expressed an interest in comparing the innovativeness of Chicago School scholarship to that of other institutions of higher learning.

Actualities 1.

The Chicago School routinely brings its scholarship into the community.

•

Contract School: The ABA program recently received permission from Chicago Public Schools to start a behaviorally based elementary school at the Garfield Park Preparatory Academy that will support student and faculty research as well as create practicum, community service, service learning, and outreach opportunities.

•

Media Outlets: Faculty members regularly contribute to discipline-related newsletters; radio programs and talk shows; local, regional and national conferences; business and agency presentations; speaker forums; and community training events. For example, in the months of March and April 2009, the following faculty engaged the community through various media outlets: o

Dr. Michael Komie, Affiliate Professor of Clinical Psychology, appeared on WCIU's First Business program to discuss how the economy might be contributing to an increase in suicide rates.

o

Dr. Michael Barr, Assistant Professor of Business Psychology, was quoted in an Associated Press article titled “Employed, but Overworked? Here are 7 Ways to Handle it.” The story ran in multiple publications including the Detroit Free Press and The News Herald (NC).

o

Dr. Tiffany Masson, Assistant Professor of Forensic Psychology, was quoted in a Medill News Service report on mental illness and juvenile offenders.

o

Dr. Michael Horowitz, President of The Chicago School, appeared on the NPR program Day to Day to discuss the psychology of job loss.

o

Dr. Evan Harrington, Associate Professor of Forensic Psychology, commented in a UK Telegraph story about conspiracy theories surrounding President Obama.

o

Dr. Cynthia Langtiw, Assistant Professor of Counseling Psychology, was quoted in a Crain’s Chicago Business story titled "Travel divide: with kids or without?"

•

Community-Based Research: Chicago School faculty members and students engage in numerous communitybased research projects through the Office of Community Partnerships.

•

Online Applied Research Projects: The Online Campus programs require students to complete an Applied Research Project at their places of employment, allowing for creativity of design that a traditional thesis may miss and the opportunity to solve real-world problems that may, in turn, drive best practice research. For example, Kim

41

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

McCoy (M.A. in Applied Industrial and Organizational Psychology student and Director of Operations at Realtor Associates of Northwest Chicagoland) titled her Applied Research Project, “Effective Communication Avenues to Reach Generation X and Y.” Her guidebook introduces organizations to electronic communications and social networks so that they can more effectively reach out to employees and clients. By learning about the most popular, cutting-edge social networking tools and how to use them, companies will also be able to navigate the changes that these generations are bringing into the workforce.

2.

The institution takes a scholarly approach to its internal assessment and strategic planning processes.

•

3.

Strategic Planning and Self-Assessment: The Chicago School incorporates a scholarly approach in its various strategic planning and self-examination initiatives, including the 2005 strategic planning process, 2006 APA site visit, 2007 HLC self-study, and “Articulating The Chicago School Model of Education” projects. Each began with clearly delineated research questions, solicited data from all key populations in a structured way, engaged in thoughtful and objective analyses, created transparent processes allowing critical review from key stakeholders, accurately represented the findings, and generated recommendations for action and further study.

Faculty members seek to incorporate students in opportunities to collaborate on cutting-edge research.

•

Dr. Diana Walker, Assistant Professor in the ABA Department, recently started a lab to explore interventions related to leading a healthy lifestyle (Behavior Analysis for Improving your Lifestyle). This is a group of ABA faculty and students who work together to improve their own and each other’s self-management plans. Some examples include increasing exercise, smoking cessation, improving eating habits, and habit reversal. Data from this project was presented at the International Association for Behavior Analysis Conference in May 2009.

•

Dr. Traci Cihon, Assistant Professor in the ABA Department, recently started a private practice and lab devoted to improving the lives of individuals and families affected by autism. She employs several students in paid practicum positions who work as developers, implementers, and trainers of behaviorally based interventions to address the challenges of autism. Several students will be conducting their master’s theses to address problems of applied significance for these clients and their families. Dr. John Smagner (Associate Professor, ABA Department) and Jennifer Klapatch (Psy.D. ABA student) run similar practices to support both student practicum experiences and scholarship opportunities.

•

Drs. John Eshleman (Assistant Professor, ABA Department) and Traci Cihon frequently utilize SAFMEDS (Say All Fast Minute Each Day Shuffle) in their courses. SAFMEDS is a teaching strategy for both clients and students that require seeing a term and saying a definition, or visa versa, not just accurately, but also quickly. Dr. Cihon is working with a current master’s student to publish the results of a two-year study analyzing the effects of studentdeveloped vs. instructor-provided SAFMEDS on weekly quiz scores in an Introduction to Applied Behavior Analysis course.

•

Drs. Sharyl Trail and Whitney Kingsbury (postdoctoral fellows in the Office of Community Partnerships) and Dr. Sayaka Machizawa (Associate Director of Community Partnerships) presented at the South Region Counseling Psychology Conference on April 24, 2009. Their presentation, Teaching Civic Responsibility to Future Psychologists, focuses on unique challenges in implementing community engaged scholarship programs in a graduate program and innovative strategies The Chicago School employed in order to overcome them and successfully transform itself into a civically engaged institution. The presentation also discussed findings of student learing outcome evaluation that revealed that community engagement is an effective tool to foster students’ sense of civic responsibility.

•

Aaron Lapointe (Clinical Psy.D. student) partnered with program faculty member Dr. Lucasz Konopka (Full Professor, Clinical Psychology) and other outside experts in a study that evaluated a very controversial diagnostic descriptor, multiple personality disorder (MPD). By means of qEEG, Aaron compared the brain activity of patients in different personality states to normal control subjects and to self. Some of the patients from this study were featured in an HBO program on MPD. Aaron was featured in the local paper in Los Angeles when he presented on this topic at an international conference, as their work is one of the few publications on this topic. The study was published in the July 2006 journal, Clinical EEG and Neuroscience.

•

Margaret Rybak (Clinical Psy.D. student) also teamed with Dr. Konopka and outside experts that resulted in a 2006 publication in Clinical EEG and Neuroscience. Her work used qEEG methods to study aggressive children and discovered that frontal lobe asymmetry may be a correlate of aggression. She presented her work in the light of a frontal lobe asymmetry model that addresses the issue of cognitive and affective regulation of behavior. This

42

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

study again represents one of the few of its kind and, as a result, Margaret was offered a lecturer position at the University of Warsaw.

4.

5.

The Chicago School is particularly interested in generating scholarship in the area of diversity and multiculturalism.

•

Cultural Impact Conference: The annual Cultural Impact Conference generates and disseminates knowledge on a variety of multicultural topics.

•

Naomi Ruth Cohen Institute Conference: This annual conferences focuses on professional and community education to combat the stigma of mental illness.

•

Center for Latino Mental Health: The Center for Latino Mental Health generates scholarship on the best practices of working with Latino/a populations.

•

Diversity Fellowships: Numerous fellowships are offered to students for the generation of a diversity scholarship through the Center for Multicultural and Diversity Studies.

•

International Service Trips: International trips begin with comprehensive scholarly explorations into the destination’s culture, provision of professional services, and human service needs.

•

Rwanda Certificate Program: In support of the school’s pursuit of developing a large-scale counselor and paracounselor training program for the country of Rwanda, numerous students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty have conducted comprehensive reviews of Rwandan history, culture, and mental health needs prior to and following its genocide fifteen years ago. Some of this work has been shared by faculty and students through conference presentations.

The Chicago School provides personalized support to students in ways not typically found at other professional schools.

•

Center for Academic Excellence: The Center for Academic Excellence provides training and tutoring in the areas of professional writing and critical thinking.

•

ABA Case Presentations: Faculty members and peers in the ABA program provide individualized guidance and feedback in classes to generate conference-quality poster presentations.

43

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Appendix XI The Learning Goal of Diversity Assumptions Diversity defines The Chicago School’s identity as an educational institution, and this attracts students, faculty, and staff who embrace diversity as the core of human interchange. While the school has been recognized for its excellence in diversity education and training, it has never been complacent in its quest to innovate and lead the field in the areas of curriculum design and pedagogy, scholarship, professional behavior, and practice. Seeking to develop diversity competence across the learning community, the school’s academic programs, complemented by numerous co-curricular learning opportunities, provide constant exposure to first-hand, multicultural experiences, improving all constituents’ ability to more effectively serve broader domestic and international communities.

The Chicago School is a diverse organization with a structure that welcomes and supports a pluralistic approach in the pursuit of its educational goals. At present, the school offers more than 20 academic programs that successfully meet the needs of diverse students and faculty and, more importantly, the needs of the populations they serve. In addition, the school offers programs in a variety of formats (on-ground, blended, and online), which has further diversified both its teachers and learners. With a clear mission to prepare graduates who are competent in working with diverse and underserved populations, the school clearly attracts professionals and professionals-in-training who possess a deep commitment to further their understanding of difference to more effectively serve humanity.

A recognized leader in diversity education and training, The Chicago School is always seeking innovative ways to be on the “cutting edge.” The school’s awareness of the diverse needs of its communities—domestic and international—and the educational interests and needs of its students motivates a constant pursuit of new opportunities to identify, design, implement, and assess new programs and best practices that will positively impact the world. In addition to courses entirely devoted to diversity, most departments creatively integrate diversity themes throughout their core curricula. Adopting a developmental model, faculty members teach students the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to advance from awareness to sensitivity to competence. In turn, this advances the students’ ability to acquire and generate multicultural scholarship, guides their understanding and application of ethics and professional behavior, and prepares them for a professional career in which they are able to use their understanding of difference to effect change otherwise not possible.

In addition to the diversity that students and faculty encounter among each other in the classroom, applied training experiences in the form of practica, internships, and community engaged scholarship expose members of The Chicago School’s learning community to diverse groups and communities and opportunities to learn from them. In an educational setting that values diversity of thought and practice, students explore alternative perspectives, different methods of approaching problems, and apply their discipline in numerous settings. In the process, they learn not only about themselves and others, but, more importantly, they learn to approach every situation with a curiosity about the differences between the people involved and how those affect experiences and outcomes. They likewise discover the critical need to continually develop their knowledge in the areas of human difference and adjust their work to most effectively meet the needs of those they serve—a skill fundamental to professional practice.

Attitudes The Chicago School sees itself as an inclusive educational institution, and faculty members value the various ways in which diversity is integrated into the curricula and the strong emphasis on recruiting diverse students and faculty. Participants expressed a deep interest in sustaining a cohesive learning community that, despite desired difference, shares core values and common educational goals. Faculty members, while viewing themselves as competent diversity educators, hold that true multicultural learning requires direct and applied experience outside of the classroom with people different from one’s self, both in terms of supervised experience and through relevant and applied scholarship. Perhaps because of the deep commitment to diversity by both the institution and the faculty, this learning goal generated the most ideas for improvement, including curriculum development and standards, teaching methods, social advocacy, and integration into the school’s rapidly growing community.

44

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Faculty members see diversity topics as the dominant and most important threads of the educational fabric at The Chicago School. Faculty members have integrated diversity into virtually all offered courses, and they see themselves as prepared to meet the high standards of competently teaching multiculturalism to their students. As non-complacent as the institution, they reported intense eagerness to continuously learn the most effective pedagogical approaches to disseminate diversity knowledge, skills, and attitudes to their students. Very strong support was reported in terms of the school’s commitment to diversify the student and faculty bodies, including targeted recruitment in terms of race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, gender, age, religion and spirituality, international geography, socio-economic status, first generational access to higher education, and ways of thinking. There is excitement that new learning platforms (e.g., online programs) and campuses (e.g., Grayslake, Irvine, Westwood) will bring different types of learners than what the school has historically seen.

Members of The Chicago School believe in sustaining a cohesive learning community that, while purposefully populated with diverse people and ideas, shares core values and that can work together toward common educational goals. Events such as the Cultural Impact Conference, cross-department community-based research projects, community-wide cultural programs, and international trips open to all students, faculty, and alumni, provide meaningful opportunities for diverse people across the school to share, learn, and create new knowledge in the area of multiculturalism and, in the process, appreciate the inclusive nature of the school. In order to enhance the connection between the school’s core community and the external community, faculty members seek to align these opportunities with themes of social justice, advocacy, and civic responsibility.

While the faculty members believe that they are competent in the classroom, they purport that the most effective way to truly learn diversity is through applied learning in diverse environments. Service in the form of practica, internships, and community engaged scholarship is seen as the students’ best opportunity to experience diversity firsthand, as it teaches how cultural differences influence conceptualizing, and responding to and solving problems in real time. In the process, they are able to experience the uplifting satisfaction that comes with the noble act of helping others. Similarly, applied multicultural scholarship provides a means for faculty and students to advance the profession’s ability to identify the needs of disparate groups, challenge outdated assumptions, and increase effectiveness across the disciplines.

With such a strong commitment to diversity, both in terms of the school’s learning community and institutional Learning Goal, it is perhaps not surprising that the working groups’ conversations on this topic generated the most ideas for improvement. For example, faculty members voiced the desire for a more clear, consensual, and progressive definition of diversity across the organization, unified standards in curricula design and pedagogy informed by best practices in the field, increased output of diversity scholarship by both students and faculty, inclusion of social advocacy topics and proficiencies, added exploration into more effective ways to maintain cohesion in the learning community in light of the school’s rapid growth and geographic expansion, and intensified participation in diversity programming by all Chicago School constituents. Recognized early in the “Articulating The Chicago School Model of Education” process as the area with the greatest opportunity for advancement, a separate task force was formed in December 2008 to explore better ways to enhance the multiculturalism and internationalization of the school, including structure, content, and processes. The results of that task force can be found in a separate appendix to this document (see Appendix XVI).

Actualities 1.

The Chicago School has created various structures that support the acquisition of multicultural competence: •

Multicultural and Diversity Affairs Committee and Center for Multicultural and Diversity Studies: The fulfillment of diversity as an Institutional Goal and a mission commitment is overseen by the Multicultural and Diversity Affairs Committee, which provides feedback, consultation, and guidance across academic programs to foster a critical understanding of the ways diversity is taught, learned, and experienced at The Chicago School.

The Center for Multicultural and Diversity Studies represents the hub of multiculturalism at The Chicago School, and as such it is integral to the everyday academic and administrative operations of the campus. It conducts multicultural research in the service of education, training, and practice, and fosters a culturally sensitive and skilled learning community that extends to those communities that serve and are served by The Chicago School.

It enhances individual learning by serving the diverse communities within the school and providing valuable connections and research that help the school serve diverse populations.

•

Diversity in the Curriculum: Every academic program has a diversity competency. In addition to an identified “Diversity” course, which is taught in unique ways across departments, a diversity component is included in all Professional Development courses and integrated into most program-specific courses. For example, all courses in

45

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

the M.A. Clinical Counseling program require at least one learning outcome with a diversity focus. Subsequent activities for this course objective must be included in each course assessment plan, which is reviewed by the faculty for learning activities and scholarly material responsive to each learning outcome. Since diversity is one of the seven competencies used to measure student learning in that department, the capstone rubrics reflect diversity as well as the six other competencies. Diversity learning is also experienced within the five concentrations of that degree program. For example, the Latino Mental Health concentration has developed a center where research activities by its staff and students, community service in collaboration with the Office of Community Partnerships, and education through academic concentration courses and two online certificate programs serve to provide deep application in this diversity subspecialty. An upcoming center for the study of gender and sexual identities will seek to use the same model in a different department.

•

•

2.

Co-Curricular Educational Opportunities: o

Cultural Impact Conference: Participating in the Cultural Impact Conference has had a profound effect on The Chicago School’s students since 1988, and is seen as an organic addition to the program curricula. As a gathering of internal and external constituents for a period of intense focus on pressing diversity issues, the conference exposes students and faculty to new scholarship models outside of the classroom. Via poster presentations at the conference, many students have the opportunity to share their own research with the professional community.

o

Colloquia and Lecture Series: Throughout the academic year, similar experiences are provided by colloquia and other speaking engagements sponsored by the Multicultural and Diversity Affairs Committee, the Center for Multicultural and Diversity Studies, the Center for International Studies, and the academic departments. Lecture series such as “Starting from Scratch” and “Storytelling in Psychology” broaden and deepen the students’ understanding of diversity by inviting presenters with diverse professional backgrounds to speak on cross-cultural topics.

o

International Programs: During recent years, The Chicago School’s understanding of diversity has expanded to include complex international dimensions. The school has a substantial number of international students who contribute to classroom diversity across academic departments. In addition, the Office of International Programs and Services fosters the internalization trend by organizing studies abroad. The school’s representative in its China Office facilitates exchange of students and faculty and explores opportunities for exporting academic programs and recruiting international students from Asia. Finally, the school will launch an International Psychology Ph.D. program in fall 2009, the first of its kind in the nation.

Multicultural Teaching Award: The value of diversity as a learning goal is reinforced by the school’s Award for Multicultural Teaching Excellence (presented to Drs. Gary Wall, 2006; Chris Leonhard, 2007, and Chanté DeLoach, 2008).

The interdependence between diversity and innovation is recognized, highly valued, and actualized at The Chicago School. On one hand, the complexity of diversity as an educational goal presupposes innovative student-focused and experiential approaches to teaching and learning; on the other hand, the diversity of the student body—along with the diversified environments in which students learn to practice—stimulate innovative thinking, learning, and problemsolving.

•

Instructional Design: Instructional design focuses on integrative teaching and learning and makes creative use of the unique experience of each student. Thus, assignments combine learning and assessment, co-curricular academic activities, study abroad, and self-reflection. Stereotypes are unlearned by adding levels of complexity to familiar subjects (e.g., migration patterns, analyzing self in relation to power and privilege, infusing a multimodality approach to multicultural concepts). Historical perspective is used to enrich students’ understanding of unfamiliar cultural phenomena. By attracting nontraditional students with diverse human and professional experience, the online and blended part-time programs, for example, are able to mix in one class professionals from across industries with no geographic boundaries. This virtual learning space promotes critical thinking and the sharing of best practices.

•

Cross-Department Programming: The co-curricular learning opportunities offered at The Chicago School emphasize pluralism. One example is the nomination, choosing, reading, and integrating of The Chicago School’s Book of the Year in the learning community. This process promotes diversity as an educational goal in a twofold way: by focusing on cross-cultural themes and by exploring diverse interpretations and practical applications of the text. In addition, the Book of the Year program is a strong community-unifying vehicle. Another example is the

46

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

“Socratic Roundtable,” a series of discussions open to doctoral students and facilitated by different faculty members, which creates opportunities for exploring seminal and contemporary questions of psychology in a pluralistic and critical thinking way.

•

3.

4.

International Studies: The Chicago School has been particularly innovative in exposing its students to diversity internationally. The service learning trips organized by the Center for International Studies take students to destinations where people are experiencing tragedies of ethnic conflicts and war, natural disasters, and famine.

Faculty members also initiate international service learning trips related to their research. Recent trips, such as those to the Middle East and Sri Lanka, had transformative effects on students and faculty. A Rwanda counselor and para-counselor certification program being created through a partnership with the Rwandan government will have a significant impact on Rwandan healthcare and education systems and on their economy by building and financially supporting counselors and supervisors. The scope of this program marks a new direction in The Chicago School’s international outreach, as it aims at a more significant global impact of academic programming than the school has ever attempted. In addition, hosting visitors from Germany, Iraq, Japan, and China (Fudan University) enlarges the scope of the community’s immediate exposure to international diversity.

The Chicago School ensures that its students have a choice of opportunities to serve diverse communities and learn how to respond creatively to the diverse needs of domestic and international communities.

•

Classroom Learning: Students receive education and training that give them the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to work with diverse populations while at the same time expanding their awareness of the variety of needs that different populations experience.

•

Co-Curricular Learning: The Center for Multicultural and Diversity Studies and the Multicultural and Diversity Affairs Committee are actively seeking innovative and meaningful ways to infuse appreciation for all individual differences throughout The Chicago School’s culture, and inviting students and faculty to participate in experiences that will enhance their cultural awareness. Strategic plans for serving the underserved were coauthored by the Office of Applied Professional Practice and the Center for Multicultural and Diversity Studies. As a result of these coordinated efforts, the vast majority of the school’s practicum and internship sites provide opportunities to work with diverse populations as a major part of their training. In addition, through various community partnerships such as Erie House and Casa Central, students deepen their understanding of the diverse needs of the local community. The value of helping others is likewise instilled by school-wide initiatives such as fund-raising and social action events.

•

Applied Scholarship: In their studies, students have the opportunity to engage in applied scholarship that can increase understanding and, more importantly, actually address the needs of diverse communities in creative and entrepreneurial ways. For example, Lorna Luz Sanchez (Clinical Psy.D., 2006) used her dissertation to secure a $35,000 grant from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity to start “Program Advance! A Computer Technology and Training Center for Hispanic Children with Autism.”

The Chicago School, being itself a diverse community, is an environment in which students are challenged to open their minds and to go beyond individual and background differences in order to learn from other people’s experience.

This is the first step in their preparation for professional practice.

•

Student Groups: Besides engaging in eye-opening class discussions, students’ interest in self-organizing around special interests have resulted in groups such as Social Justice, PRIDE, Latino/a Students and Friends, Graduate Student Association for Black Culture, Asian Association, International Students, Disabilities Interest Group, Muslim Interest Group, Jewish Interest Group, MACC Council, International Students Group, International MACC Student, I/O Task Force, School Psychology Student Organization, Society for Business Psychology, Forensic Ambassador Club, Chicago School Athletics Team, and Chicago Students for Behavioral Analysis. These specialinterest organizations allow students to gather, share experiences and perspectives, and advance their unique interests in the larger internal and external communities.

•

Community Life: Likewise, integrative programs such as the Cultural Impact Conference and the Book of the Year contribute to learning through communal experiences.

•

Engaged and Applied Learning: The opportunities for service learning, community-based research, and community service provided through the Office of Community Partnerships make it possible for students to practice entering unfamiliar communities. Practica and internships solidify this skill, which is an essential part of the diversity competency of each academic program. Students exposed to international communities become

47

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

aware of the tremendous complexity of global diversity. Future student exchange programs will provide more adequate venues for our students to learn how to communicate and offer their services in diverse cultural, social, and political environments.

48

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Appendix XII The Learning Goal of Professional Behavior Assumptions The core component of the Professional Behavior Learning Goal is ethics, though it calls for a more global way of thinking, behaving, and feeling. While academic departments may generate unique understandings of professional behavior in light of their competencies, degree requirements, and the nature of work in which their graduates engage, there is a clear understanding of its importance as a teachable subject both within and outside the classroom. Professional behavior is developed through The Chicago School’s innovative programs, scholarship, and pedagogy, which likewise prepare graduates to become leaders in their fields. Professional behavior is a practice that is delivered and developed, particularly through the values of service and community. The value of community enjoins our students to provide service in a number of ways during their graduate education, and these opportunities guide them into the professional behavior requirements of their chosen profession through the teaching, mentoring, supervision, and advisement of faculty, site supervisors, and staff members.

Ethics can clearly be taught. Students are familiarized with their applicable ethics codes, and ethics topics are infused throughout the curriculum. As students encounter real-world ethical dilemmas in their applied learning experiences, they are taught how to manage these through close supervision on-site as well as in settings such as practicum seminars. Outside of the classroom and supervisory relationships, the co-curricular areas of the school teach other important aspects of professional behavior. For example, the Center for Multicultural and Diversity Studies exposes students to a variety of multicultural experiences, and the Center for International Studies exposes students to international issues, needs, and opportunities in order to increase global awareness and responsibility. The Center for Academic Excellence emphasizes the importance of and supports student development in the areas of written and oral communication, critical thinking, effective study strategies, and time management.

The offices of Applied Professional Practice and Career Services partner in helping students identify career goals, prepare professional application materials, network, negotiate, and manage complications that emerge during practicum and internship experiences. The Office of Community Partnerships engages students with the community in order to identify and help solve pressing social needs while increasing students’ understanding of civic responsibility and issues of social justice. The Office of Clinical Services offers a system-wide series and regular programs on a variety of health and wellness topics.

The Chicago School develops innovative academic programs that meet the needs of the market and field. In so doing, faculty members are teaching students how to expand the reach of their discipline and benefit novel sectors in the workforce. During their studies, they are exposed to innovative scholarship and pedagogy and are learning to tackle problems in creative yet informed ways. Graduates, therefore, are positioned to be innovators and leaders within the community and field.

The Chicago School core community is characterized as inclusive, accepting, collaborative, pluralistic, and multicultural, and it therefore models and requires students to think, act, and feel in consistent ways. Through numerous curricular and co-curricular offerings, students are required and encouraged to bring these values into the external community—both locally and globally— and return as transformed individuals through their applied learning experiences. Additionally, the various ways in which students engage in real-world educational, practice, and scholarship opportunities helps them identify what they want to do with their careers, not simply how to do it.

Through service and applied learning, students learn the professional behavior requirements of their profession in the multiple roles of student, apprentice, and future professional and colleague. Numerous loops have been established that provide routine feedback about academic and professional comportment performance, and mechanisms such as Academic Development Plans can be supportively applied to help students achieve success in their academic program and field placements. Real-world practice likewise provides in vivo opportunities to face complicated ethical and professional situations along with guidance on how to best resolve them. Finally, students learn the mutually beneficial nature of service in which both the provider and the recipient benefit in ways they otherwise could not. For students, they learn the difference between service and charity and recognize the importance of incorporating mature personal, social, civic, and global responsibilities into one’s professional life.

49

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Attitudes The Chicago School faculty endorses setting high professional behavior standards, holding its members accountable to them, responding to concerns through support and/or discipline depending upon the nature of the situation, maintaining open lines of communication, and rewarding exemplary performance. With an appreciation for the unique experiences that have shaped their own and their students’ understanding and approach to professional behavior, there is a respect and understanding that both can learn more effective ways to leverage professional behavior toward desired outcomes. Finally, faculty members believe that mentoring and role-modeling are the most effective ways to teach professional behavior.

The faculty believes that the institution and the learning community need to maintain very high professional behavior standards and hold its members accountable. Viewing themselves as gatekeepers to the profession, faculty members express a deep sense of obligation to protect the public, the field, and the reputation of the school and the integrity of its degrees. Therefore, they routinely review their students’ professional comportment as well as their academic performance, and they take timely action when difficulties are encountered, responding with either support when appropriate and/or discipline when warranted. Seeing this as a shared responsibility, they seek to establish and maintain open lines of communication within the department, with site supervisors (i.e., “faculty in the field”), and with students, to ensure that professional behavior strengths and areas for improvement are clearly identified and consistently managed by all those involved in the students’ education and applied training.

While the faculty clearly takes situations involving problematic professional behavior seriously, they also seek additional ways to recognize and reward students who go “above and beyond,” and exemplify the desired characteristics of a Chicago School professional-in-training.

Faculty members recognize that students come to The Chicago School with unique experiences that have shaped their preparation for and ideas about professional behavior. There is a strong desire to treat students with respect and as future colleagues. While the faculty members believe they are well equipped to serve as role models, mentors, teachers, and supervisors, they also appreciate that each student provides opportunities to teach them new ways of thinking, acting, and feeling. For example, there is an appreciation for generational difference in regards to the ways in which people define, engage in, and judge professional behavior. These differences should be understood and approached as an opportunity for both faculty and students to learn how to more effectively leverage professional behavior toward desired outcomes.

The faculty believes that professional behavior is best taught through modeling and mentoring, as this supports the development and modification of students’ pre-existing ideas. It is also assumed that modeling and mentoring encourage collaboration between faculty and students, promoting positive working relationships, departmental unity, and learning environments.

Actualities 1.

2.

The commitment to teach and develop professional behavior as an institutional learning goal is reflected in the activities intended to help students internalize an understanding and commitment to their professional development.

•

Curricular Learning: In the classroom, professional behavior is taught through course material, class discourse, and role-play. Although teaching professional ethics is required in all programs, it is also infused throughout the curriculum and becomes progressively more applied in nature as students progress through their programs.

•

Co-Curricular Learning: As described above, numerous co-curricular areas likewise contribute to the professional development of students during their Chicago School education. Additionally, there are a number of processes that reflect a modeling/mentoring approach to teaching professional behavior, including the revised IRB review processes and the new way in which Academic Development Plans are generated across the institution.

These were designed following thoughtful discourse with training supervisors, seminar leaders, committee members, and advisors, and throughout these processes, the faculty’s behavior takes on more meaning as models and mentors.

Modeling is also reflected through the faculty’s participation in professional organizations such as the American Psychological Association, the National Council of Schools and Programs in Professional Psychology, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Chicago Industrial Organizational Psychologists, the National Association of School Psychologists, the American Counseling Association, the Behavior Analyst Certification Board, the Association

50

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

of Chicagoland Externship and Practicum Training Sites, and the Higher Learning Commission, and it demonstrates faculty members’ professional activities and collegiality among peers.

•

3.

National Latina/o Psychological Association: As a brief example, a group of four faculty members and four students attended the National Latina/o Psychological Association Conference in November of 2008, where they jointly attended professional presentations and delivered two poster presentations. The students had first-hand experience meeting national leaders in multicultural psychology, met other students from around the country, and had the opportunity to present scholarly work. The scholarship reflected an integration of academic content, but their comportment was directly reflective of their relationships with their professors as well as with other internal and external professionals.

Many other opportunities exist for faculty and peer mentorship to develop the desired professional behavior of Chicago School students.

•

Online Mentors: Online teaching mentors work individually with students to navigate their academic programs, design and implement their Applied Research Projects, and consult around professional career goals.

•

I/O Student Mentoring Program: The I/O Student Mentoring Program links students and faculty for social, academic, and professional support and advancement.

•

Chicago School Student Association: The Chicago School Student Association provides opportunities for student leadership within the organization, development and support of social action events, and professional exchanges and mentorship with Chicago School’s administration.

•

Community Service Seminars: Community service seminars help students self-reflect on their experiences working directly in the community, fostering self-awareness, civic responsibility, and career direction.

•

Practicum Seminars: Likewise, practicum seminars provide opportunities for the close academic oversight of student work on internships and practicum, and consultation on working in often complex organizations.

•

Applied Professional Practice: The Office of Applied Professional Practice offers individual, small group, and large workshops on how to navigate and comport one’s self during the application process to internships and practica, and the department staff consults with students, faculty, and site supervisors when they encounter difficult ethical dilemmas.

•

The Chicago School Library: The Chicago School Library offers in-person and virtual support on increasing information literacy skills.

•

Career Services: The Office of Career Services similarly offers face-to-face and online resources on how to engage in an effective job search.

51

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Appendix XIII Assessment of Student Learning Outcomes The Chicago School is committed to providing a superior educational experience for all students. Assessment of student learning is an important component of the quality assurance measures The Chicago School employs to monitor and improve the effectiveness of the educational experience for its students. Effective assessment of student learning provides valid feedback on two levels. First, each course contains assessments of learning that provide formative feedback on the progress each student is making on course learning objectives. Second, the summative assessment of program competencies provides data for the administration to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the total program.

Currently, The Chicago School’s formative assessments evaluate student performance on the course learning objectives in each course. The course learning objectives are the specific skills, knowledge, and attitudes that are needed to perform a competence. Aligning course level assessments with course learning objectives provides a structured learning process in which the assessments promote learning.

The school’s summative assessments are based on the acquisition of program competencies. These competencies are complex bundles of specific skills, knowledge, and attitudes. The summative assessments are conducted at the end of the program of study in the form of professional examinations, capstone courses, practica, internships, or comprehensive examinations. The summative assessments provide information that helps evaluate the overall effectiveness of the program to deliver the learning it has identified.

Similar to The Chicago School’s business and educational approach, the institution is always striving to improve and innovate.

The student learning assessments provide the data necessary to ensure excellence in academic performance.

Purpose and Scope Effective student learning assessment is a priority for all academic programs. Each program develops and implements a plan to assess its academic performance at the program level. The assessment process provides reliable and valid data upon which to base program performance demonstrations, program performance enhancement decisions, and business decisions. The assessment plan creates a process of continuous quality improvement in which performance data serve as feedback in a learning loop to monitor and promote the success of all academic programs.

Student learning assessment entails: 1.

2.

Reviewing and evaluating academic programs based on specific criteria (program competencies), and Providing academic performance data upon which to base changes intended to materially improve those programs.

Definition of Assessment The American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) offers the following definition of assessment: Assessment is an ongoing process aimed at understanding and improving student learning. It involves making our expectations explicit and public; setting appropriate criteria and high standards for learning quality; systematically gathering, analyzing, and interpreting evidence to determine how well performance matches those expectations and standards; and using the resulting information to document, explain, and improve performance. When embedded effectively within larger institutional systems, assessment can help us focus our collective attention, examine our assumptions, and create a shared academic culture dedicated to assuring and improving the quality of higher education (Angelo, 1995, p.7).

Assessment Operationalized At the program level, student learning assessment is accomplished by defining and focusing program competencies on the true intent of the program; identifying the data that will demonstrate these competencies; choosing authentic measurements to collect those data; and establishing a valid, meaningful method of analyzing those data.

52

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

At the course level, student learning assessment means administering multiple, ongoing formative assessments that provide students with the feedback they need to understand and demonstrate course learning objectives. If both the course and program level assessment follow the same structure, then all stakeholders have access to consistent, valid, and reliable data upon which to base decisions about program performance.

Student Learning Assessment and Continuous Quality Improvement To complete the continuous quality improvement process, the results of the assessment process provide feedback into the system, which is used to design program changes.

Focus on Learning of Students as a Group Throughout the assessment design process, it is critical to ensure that the assessment plan assesses that which has been learned by students as a group and not the performance of individual students (i.e., the learning of program competencies as defined in the program curricula). While some of the strategies chosen to assess student learning may involve the evaluation of individual student projects that are graded to meet course requirements, the use of the same student project for student learning assessment (i.e., portfolios, theses, capstones) requires an evaluation of that student project to demonstrate the program competencies. A course project is graded through comparison to the course learning objectives. When evaluating the same project for program competencies, the program competencies are the focus of the evaluation. An effective student learning assessment plan measures the performance of groups of students on program competencies and uses these data to evaluate the performance of the program.

Assessment Process Student learning assessment includes a variety of valid measurements. The program staff conducts these measurements on a periodic basis. To produce a convincing assessment plan, programs include: 1.

2.

3.

At least one direct method of assessing learning, At least one indirect method of assessing learning/program performance, and At least one externally validated measurement of program performance.

The Office of Institutional Research conducts research at the institutional level that can assist program administrators in the last two categories.

Data Each competency may be examined to determine precisely what data best demonstrates it. This step focuses the selection of instruments and analysis methods while ensuring that the instruments validly, reliably, and authentically measure the competency as the program has defined it. It also helps to separate the demonstration of the competency (product) from the process of demonstrating the competency (process), a common confusion in student learning assessment. Both products and processes are important to consider and measure separately. The data collected in the student learning assessment process supports both purposes: demonstration of current performance and feedback for continuous quality improvement.

Direct Assessment A direct assessment is one that validly and reliably measures a competency through the evaluation of student work products. For any assessment to be valid, it may measure what it purports to measure—in this case, the program competency. The two principle categories of validity are construct and content. The program competencies determine and identify the program “constructs” being taught and measured. The course learning objectives identify the “content” used to measure those constructs, which limits the selection of instruments. A valid data collection process requires a minimum number of instruments. A less valid data collection process requires more instruments to validate the results.

Evaluating student work for grading requires different processes than evaluating it for program competencies. For example, course learning objectives are usually subsets of program competencies. An evaluation to determine if a student work product demonstrates the course competencies would be different than evaluating the same student work for program competencies, which may include many “learnings.” Using the same student work for both purposes is possible, but the criteria used to evaluate

53

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

will match the constructs being measured (i.e., program competency vs. course learning objective). In most cases, direct assessments of learning via student work require locally developed assessment instruments.

When to Assess Each program decides which competencies they will assess and when they will assess them. Depending upon the method and goal of an assessment, the actual execution of the assessment may occur at different times during the program year and the student’s academic program. While some assessments require semester measurements, most may come at a point in the academic program when the students are best prepared to demonstrate the competence; in other words, when they have demonstrated all of the learning objectives identified as associated with the competency. If program competencies are hierarchical and integrated, it may be necessary to wait until the students are at the end of the academic program to assess them. Once again, the purpose of program level assessment is to assess the program and not the student.

Who to Assess The decision of whom to assess is also a program decision. The program administration may decide to include all students or to choose a random sample of the students. If choosing a sample, then it may be random to allow for generalization of the results and account for extraneous variables that might invalidate the results and/or inhibit effective decision-making based on the results. A number of factors influence appropriate sample sizes, and the Office of Academic Development assists with these decisions. In general, if the instrument used to evaluate student works is scaled in clearly discriminated categories, the sample size may be 25–30 students. If a quantitative scale were used, the sample size would need to be 200–300 to produce the same test power.

Where to Assess The program may also decide where the assessments will take place and the method for conducting the assessments. The schedule and strategy for conducting assessments vary according to the kind of assessment being conducted, and may be decided by the program administration after all other decisions are made. The Office of Academic Development consults and assists program staff with this decision.

Criteria for Evaluation As a part of designing the assessment process, the program may create criteria for evaluating the student results. The program may decide the appropriate scaling method for the data they have collected. Scaling might vary from dichotomous (demonstrated/undemonstrated) to an ordinal scale (ranked rubrics), to a quantitative scale using frequencies, depending upon what the program needs to know and what data are collected.

References Angelo, T. A. (1995). Reassessing (and defining) assessment. AAHE Bulletin, 48, 7.

Astin, A. W., Banta, T. W., Cross, K. P., El-Khawas, E., Ewell, P. T., Hutchings, P., et al. (2005). 9 Principles of good practice for assessing student learning. Retrieved January 8, 2005, from http://www.aahe.org/assessment/principl.htm.

54

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Appendix XIV Assessment of Institutional Effectiveness The Chicago School is deeply committed to continuous quality improvement. An acclaimed student learning plan and formalized academic program review process epitomize these efforts. The institution recently recognized, however, that it had reached the size and scope to move to the next level: assessment on the institutional level. To that end, The Chicago School Task Force on Institutional Effectiveness was established in Fall 2007 and charged with developing a continuous quality improvement plan for The Chicago School.

The task force met numerous times, engaged in lively discussion and debate, and drafted a detailed plan for consideration by the President’s Cabinet that was formally approved in Spring 2008. Further underscoring the importance of this undertaking, the Institutional Effectiveness Initiative was included as one of five annual institutional goals for 2008–2009, alongside “Articulating The Chicago School Model of Education.”

In brief, the model for institution-wide review initially subdivides the school into its two logical “parts”—academic units (programs) and administrative units. Each academic program and administrative unit completes an annual internal review. The organizing theme for academic programs in this effort is the four Chicago School learning goals of scholarship, diversity, professional behavior, and professional practice (plus overall program effectiveness); the organizing theme for administrative units is the four Chicago School institutional values of education, community, innovation, and service.

Although an annual review cycle for both academic and administrative review might seem overly ambitious, the task force agreed that this timing was optimal for its purposes. Given the speed of change at The Chicago School and the two-year “life cycle” of most students, a slower pace might jeopardize the usefulness of institution-wide findings. In addition, task force members were concerned that problems or challenges discovered in the review process might well intensify if solutions were not put in place as quickly as possible. With an annual cycle, implementation can be verified with a frequency that maximizes successful problem alleviation.

The process of annual self-assessment by academic and administrative units is designed to be analogous. The primary difference, as mentioned above, is in the organizing theme. Academic units conceptualize their reviews using program competencies and program effectiveness; administrative units conceptualize their reviews using The Chicago School’s institutional values. Each academic and administrative unit receives training and assistance in selecting a small number of clear, measurable, and meaningful key indicators to measure its performance, using existing structures (e.g., meetings, committees), reports, and systems (e.g., report tracker, survey results) when appropriate. Optimally, these indicators include: 1.

2.

3.

Direct measures in addition to those that are indirect, External measures in addition to those that are internal to the unit, and Benchmarking internally and/or externally.

Reporting templates are also provided, guiding units in efficiently communicating their review outcomes by requesting the following types of information: 1.

2.

3.

4.

Results of implementation of past review conclusions (beginning with the second review cycle), A brief overview of data examined, The unit’s strengths and challenges, and An action plan for continuous improvement.

Once academic unit reviews are completed, they are in turn reviewed collectively (i.e., a meta-review) by the interdisciplinary Academic Effectiveness Review Committee (AcaERC). Administrative unit reviews follow a parallel course through meta-review by an interdepartmental Administrative Effectiveness Review Committee (AdminERC).

AcaERC and AdminERC are charged with summarizing the main issues and themes arising from individual unit reviews through established reporting templates. These summary reports are then forwarded to an Institutional Effectiveness Review Committee (IERC) comprised of representatives from all of the school’s internal constituencies (e.g., administration, faculty, staff, and students). The reports are also provided as feedback to the individual units.

55

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

In addition to overseeing the entire institutional effectiveness process, IERC considers the reports from AcaERC and AdminERC in a comprehensive, institution-wide context. Its charge is to cast major concerns into a summary highlighting vertical and horizontal communication, collaboration, and resource allocation. Likewise, it is also charged with delineating specific recommendations for continuous institutional improvements that are passed on to the President’s Cabinet.

The President’s Cabinet reviews the report and recommendations from IERC, providing its reaction and response to The Chicago School community. The task force has suggested that this feedback come in the form of an annual fall term “State of the School” address. More detailed unit-specific feedback will be funneled, if necessary, through the appropriate committees back to the unit level.

Finally, Klein and Sorra (1996) stated that many innovative processes “yield little or no benefit to adopting organizations, not because the innovations are ineffective, but because their implementation is unsuccessful” (p. 1055). Fully aware of this pitfall, the task force included the following supportive institutional best practices identified by those authors in The Chicago School’s Institutional Effectiveness Plan: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

Timely and readily accessible training.

Additional assistance following initial training.

Respect for professional knowledge and content expertise at the unit level.

Adequate time to learn and practice.

Responsiveness to complaints and concerns.

Readily accessible resources related to the initiative.

Praise and recognition from supervisors.

Integration within institutional operations.

Institutional commitment at every level of the organization.

The diagram on the following page visually depicts The Chicago School’s new Institutional Effectiveness Plan.

56

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Structure, Process, and Timeline

IERC findings and Cabinet response are reviewed by the Executive Committee of the Board

Link to strategic planning processes

AcaERC findings are reviewed by the Academic Affairs Committee of the Board

President’s Cabinet Reviews report and recommendations from IERC, provides feedback to TCS community (including students) in early fall

Copies of all committee reports are provided as feedback “down the chain”

Institutional Effectiveness Review Committee (IERC) Oversees entire review process; conducts assessment of overall processes during the summer (suggested format: all-day retreat) with special focus on vertical and horizontal communication, collaboration, and resource allocation. Submits report (and recommendations) to the President’s Cabinet

Academic Effectiveness Review Committee (AcaERC) Conducts meta-review in late spring (suggested format: all-day retreat), summarizing major issues/themes in a brief report to the IERC

Administrative Effectiveness Review Committee (AdminERC) Conducts meta-review in late spring (suggested format: all-day retreat), summarizing major issues/themes in a brief report to the IERC

Individual Departments/Programs Conduct annual intra-unit review in early spring (suggested format: all-day retreat) according to current procedures

Individual Units/Functions Collect data in fall, analyze (suggested format: all-day retreat) and complete report in early spring

57

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Recommendations for the Future The institutional effectiveness review process will provide the structure and protocol for assessment of The Chicago School Model of Education. All parts of the model, including the four institutional values; four learning goals; and three meta-themes of pluralism, integration of theory and practice, and impact on society; will be subjected to evidence-based evaluation, with the overarching goal of continuous improvement. In addition, performance indicators will be purposefully scalable and transferable, so that the model may be successfully exported to other programs and sites.

References Klein, K. J. and Sorra, J. S. (1996). The challenge of innovation implementation. Academy of Management Review, 21, 1055– 1080.

58

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Appendix XV Aspirations The Chicago School strives to create pluralistic, diverse, transformational, and reciprocal experiences. The goals and actions of the learning community converge to instill professional practice, diversity, scholarship, and professional behavior, ultimately giving birth to students who will make a high impact on their clients, organizations, communities, and the field of psychology as a whole. One value The Chicago School holds in especially high esteem is innovation, and while members are proud of the institution’s many accomplishments, this value pushes the organization away from complacency. As attestation to the value of innovation, The Chicago School community worked to identify aspirations for its educational model, and thus, begin to address these issues in a creative, adept, and cohesive manner. This present, self-initiated examination of the institutional values and learning goals reflects in itself an innovative drive to tackle Chicago School aspirations through a unique process. Several themes emerged during the process that reflect areas faculty members saw as absent, lacking, or in need of improvement.

Bridging Academics and Application Faculty members expressed the belief that it is important to know the content of classes and, more importantly, how to apply this knowledge in the communities where students live and work. They identified a need to better maintain a balance between seeking to innovate in the context of community needs (response-driven) and pursuing change derived from the school’s mission (agenda-driven). Scholarship and professional development should be reflected internally and externally; however, the school has not realized its full potential to intersect with external professional practice. For example, there is an identified need for more interaction among students in different program years and for a formal alumni mentoring program. Greater efforts to involve graduates in mentoring, training, supervision, and teaching opportunities could expand the school’s reach into the community and increase ways in which Chicago School students can experience transformational and reciprocal learning. Furthermore, faculty members primarily intersect with students in the context of traditional academia, and as a result, the school may not be capitalizing on other opportunities to integrate scholarship, practice, diversity, and professional behavior. To challenge this disconnect, the school should explore developing additional ways in which students and faculty can collaborate in practice settings, professional organizations, community engaged scholarship, and advocacy work.

Comprehensive Assessment Chicago School programs continuously seek more effective ways to teach and assess how well students apply what they learn both within and outside of the classroom. Developing and assessing student professional behavior is clearly moving forward in the academic realm, and faculty members are working earnestly to facilitate more regular and holistic feedback on the professional development of their students. However, more effective assessment of abstract competencies is needed, particularly in the areas of critical thinking skills, professional comportment, higher-level research activities, and the assimilation of a diversity mindset. In this light, the faculty’s holistic evaluation approach remains even more unclear in regards to the application of one’s practice in outside settings. Integrating alumni and faculty into supervising students in their fieldwork may make the learning goals more clear and consistent across settings.

Diversity of Person, Place, and Time 1.

Diversity of Person: In an ever-changing and diversifying world, the school needs to constantly identify and meet the needs of its diverse students and the populations they serve. For example, faculty members expressed the need for the school to pay more attention to working with people beyond those who have been historically underserved (i.e., groups categorized by race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, religious affiliation, socio-economic status, disability), including victims of traumatic brain injury or stroke, older adults, war veterans, children in the welfare system, and cognitive mindsets. Students need to be committed to working with many different people not only through the application of their discipline, but by enhancing community life and promoting change through a deep sense of personal, social, civic and global responsibility. Regarding the needs of students, the school should “push the boundaries” beyond just teaching traditional ways to apply one’s trade to make a difference but to also link students, graduates, and faculty members into the realm of advocacy and social activism. While the school expresses and demonstrates a deep commitment to recruiting, retaining, and developing diverse faculty and student bodies, more could be done in this area. This includes developing higher proportions of diverse individuals across the learning community, training on ways to best “model” diversity in the classroom, support around acclimation and acculturation, and additional self-care programs.

59

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

2.

Diversity of Place: The Chicago School faculty members voiced a strong desire to increasingly model initiatives in the field, community, and across a wide range of settings; promote and expand international psychology programs; and maintain an ongoing commitment to base innovative programming on data from the marketplace. Engaging in scholarship that addresses the needs of diverse communities challenges faculty members and students to learn and implement research methodologies that are consistent with the value of service-oriented and community-based research, demonstrates the commitment to understand the relationship between diversity and well-being, and raises the expectation that scholarship should directly benefit people and their communities. But striving for diversity is not limited to the settings in which our students work; it also includes the multicultural environment in which our students learn. Increasing opportunities for cross-program and cross-campus interactions would facilitate “learning without boarders.” In so doing, the community recognized the need for a stronger and more intentional information technology infrastructure to support new ways of teaching so that learning and “virtual training” can more easily occur across departments and campuses, within the community, in locations that otherwise do not have access, and across international borders. The organization needs to better infuse diversity into not only what our students learn, but also into where and how they learn.

3.

Diversity of Time: Members of both the curricular and co-curricular working groups desire increased resources to support the pursuit of grants, publications, presentations, and other scholarly work. More specifically, they want to engage in innovative research such as applying for new grants in areas that extend the boundaries of current research, publish or co-author textbooks, and create experimental labs that could include virtual reality programming. Similarly, faculty want more time to explore ways to integrate contemporary models into their teaching while still balancing the need to teach students more demonstrated, traditional, and evidence-based methods. Collectively, providing faculty members with resources to pursue these endeavors will allow them to look back in time by promoting convergent thinking surrounding the scientific method and push the school forward in time by promoting the divergent thinking necessary to innovate.

Communication A consistent call was made to increase the transparency, congruence, and cohesiveness in communication. Although uncertainty is an inevitable and understandable part of innovation and change (especially in a rapidly growing and entrepreneurial environment such as The Chicago School), members of the learning community proposed that better communication would ease some of the disruptive stress that tends to accompany such processes. For example, they suggested that the school should more clearly articulate the philosophy and future goals of the institution to the faculty (including adjunct), staff, and students; provide training and education about how it wants people to innovate and in what areas; and clarify its position that research should be linked to social, economic, and policy needs. Additionally, the growth of the school has made collaboration more challenging. Communication between faculty members and students should be fluid so that ample opportunities arise to work together on projects, cross-discipline research, and other innovative activities. Toward this end, the school could work more intentionally to create cooperative working models between students, faculty members, and administration. Such interactions should bridge cohorts—both within and between programs and campuses—to increase the sharing of knowledge and experiences and maintain a “community feel” to the school.

Defined Learning Goals Throughout the process of articulating The Chicago School Model of Education, it became increasingly clear that the institution has outgrown the definitions of its existing learning goals. The Steering Committee recommends that a task force that includes administrators, faculty members, students, and alumni, be established to propose revised learning goals that more accurately reflect The Chicago School Model of Education. In so doing, the task force should consider the following ideas and suggestions that emerged in the process: 1.

Professional Practice: Regardless of one’s theoretical orientation, there appears to be consensus that professionals should approach their work from an evidence-based perspective (i.e., research best known practices for the situation and population in question, deliver an intervention, assess its impact, adjust accordingly), though a clear and inclusive definition of this is currently lacking. Also, though faculty members value innovation, they currently do not systematically teach students how to innovate themselves. Similarly, the professional practice learning goal could more clearly connect the values of service and community as they have now been more clearly defined, with particular

60

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

emphasis on the desire to create leaders and servants within the community who are equipped to make significant and lasting change.

2.

Scholarship: While the learning community clearly values pluralism, an inclusive definition that incorporates and gives equal credibility to the scholarships of discovery, integration, application, and teaching is lacking. In creating a definition of this kind, the task force should dispel the common misunderstanding that scholarship is limited to activities such as authoring a book, chapter, or journal article, or presenting at local or national conferences; rather, scholarship should be understood as something to be incorporated into all professional pursuits, including professional practice, teaching, innovation, and community service.

3.

Diversity: As The Chicago School becomes increasingly transnational and global in the context of an ever-diversifying world, the institution has to redefine what diversity means and how it is taught. There appears to be agreement that the definition of diversity must still include, but go beyond, requiring competency in working with particular populations that have been historically discriminated, disenfranchised, marginalized, and oppressed. Rather, diversity should be understood as the soul of effective human exchange. Those competent in diversity approach every situation with an eagerness to identify individual and group differences and display a deep curiosity to learn how uniqueness in and between people affect experiences and outcomes. Skilled professionals understand that “tolerance,” “respect,” “appreciation,” and “celebration” of diversity are merely pre-conditions to identify ways to leverage diversity toward positive outcomes not otherwise possible. Similarly, while teachers and learners should continually develop knowledge in areas of human difference to guide their actions, practitioners need to always expect that people vary from group classifications. As such, they must continuously engage in a recursive learning process in which they assess their impact and adjust accordingly to advance human understanding, insight, and the effective application of their discipline.

4.

Professional Behavior: Finally, the school needs to expand the definition of professional behavior, as there is general dissatisfaction with how it is currently articulated and evaluated. More specifically, competency in professional behavior has come to be understood as the absence of unethical or unprofessional behavior. Faculty members across the curricular and co-curricular areas identified proactive knowledge, skills, and attitudes that could broaden and deepen this desired outcome of our students.

For example, a new professional behavior learning goal could be informed by the recent clarification of “professional comportment expectations” in The Student Handbook, which states that, “As apprentices of professional psychology, therefore, students are holistically evaluated by all members of the learning community on standards of professional performance, development, and functioning that include, but are not limited to, their: •

• • •

Interpersonal and professional competence (e.g., consistently establishing positive interpersonal relationships, demonstrating an active commitment to education and training, communicating professionally, demonstrating integrity, affirming individual and cultural differences), Self-awareness and self-reflection (e.g., awareness of own various roles in diverse contexts, recognizing limitations and training/learning needs, awareness of own cultural values), Openness to feedback, and Proactive, engaged resolution of issues that may interfere with their professional development or functioning.”

Likewise, professional behavior, as explored in the working groups, could support the adoption of certain professional responsibilities that would incorporate an increased ability to take care of one’s self, immediate social sphere, community, and world: •

Personal Responsibility: o o o

•

Effectively and professionally advocates and cares for one’s self as an individual within larger social systems.

Accepts and utilizes both positive and constructive feedback.

Makes decisions that are guided by honesty, fairness, respect, and integrity.

Social Responsibility: o o o

Concerned about how events impact groups as well as individuals.

Compassion for and commitment to help those outside one’s immediate social sphere.

Decision-making includes consideration of the common and greater good.

61

The Chicago School Model of Education

•

Civic Responsibility: o o o

•

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Understands how community systems operate and the problems they face.

Recognizes the benefits and challenges of diversity within communities.

Commits time and energy to enhance community life through direct service and advocacy.

Global Responsibility: o o o

Understands how politics, world events, and international relations affect individual, social, and civic life, both domestically and abroad.

Identifies pertinent international and cross-cultural issues within and across borders.

Commits time and energy to participate in political activities, advocate for social justice, and foster attitudes of peace and reconciliation among and between people of different national origins.

Summary of Recommendations 1.

Increase Interactions and Improve Communications • • • •

2.

Increase the Commitment to Diversity and Internationalization • • •

3.

Increase attention to diverse populations beyond those who have been historically underserved.

Increase diversity across the learning community, training on ways to best “model” diversity in the classroom, support around acclimation and acculturation, and self-care programs.

Promote and expand international psychology programs.

Increase Support for Scholarship and Teaching • • • •

4.

Increase alumni mentoring and field supervision opportunities.

Create more opportunities for students and faculty members to collaborate in training and practice settings, professional organizations, community engaged scholarship, and advocacy initiatives.

Increase opportunities for cross-program and cross-campus interactions.

Increase the transparency, congruence, and cohesiveness in communication, particularly around philosophy and future goals of the institution.

More intensely support scholarship that addresses the needs of diverse communities.

Increase resources to support the pursuit of grants, publications, presentations, and other scholarly work.

Clarify the importance that scholarship should be relevantly linked to social, economic, and policy needs.

Increase time for faculty to explore ways to integrate contemporary models into their teaching while still balancing the need to teach students more demonstrated, traditional, and evidence-based methods.

Increase Support for Innovation • • • •

Develop more effective ways to assess critical thinking skills, professional comportment, and higher-level research activities.

Maintain commitment to base innovative programming on data from the marketplace.

Develop a stronger and more intentional information technology infrastructure to support new ways of teaching and learning.

Provide training and education about how the school wants people to innovate and in what areas.

62

The Chicago School Model of Education

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Appendix XVI Multicultural Competence Exploratory Study: Key Findings and Recommendations The Multicultural Competence Exploratory Study revealed some important information about efforts toward multicultural competence at The Chicago School, including similarities and differences across the various academic programs and related departments. Given the significant limitations of an online survey format, time constraints, and the variability of responses, these findings are limited in their ability to fully inform efforts to understand and incorporate multicultural competence at The Chicago School. A summary of the findings and recommendations are provided according to the seven areas as defined by Fouad (2006).

Explicit Statements of Diversity: Develop an explicit and comprehensive statement of diversity at the institutional level with academic program objectives that clearly align with the institutional statement.

•

Findings: Institutional-level statements of diversity at The Chicago School had a strong presence on The Chicago School website. All six academic departments surveyed responded positively to having explicit statements of diversity in place (Clinical Psychology, Clinical Counseling, School Psychology, Forensic Psychology, Applied Behavior Analysis, Business Psychology). The three additional non-academic areas surveyed (Center for Multicultural and Diversity Studies, Center for International Studies, Multicultural and Diversity Affairs Committee) all reported having explicit statements of diversity. A content review of materials revealed, however, a wide range of specificity in these diversity statements. These results highlight the inconsistency of diversity definitions as they are evidenced at The Chicago School.

•

Recommendations: A common statement and understanding of diversity can positively impact the creation of goals and objectives that may serve as a guide for developing multicultural competence. Further, this common definition will facilitate the development of courses—outside the classroom learning opportunities—with explicit goals in moving towards increasing multicultural competence. A task force consisting of administrators, faculty, staff, and students would facilitate the collaborative development of an explicit statement of diversity. The academic programs may then develop program specific learning goals and objectives to address their unique needs.

Recruitment of Diverse Students: Clearly link specific recruitment efforts to specific diversification efforts.

•

Findings: The Office of Admission identified several different ways in which staff members actively recruit diverse students. The impact of these recruitment efforts were not demonstrated in the applicant data. Data provided by the Office of Institutional Research indicated a two-percent increase in the overall proportion of students of color at The Chicago School from 2006 to 2008. Both Clinical Psy.D. and Business Psy.D. programs evidenced a decline in the proportion of students of color, while the master’s-level academic programs all showed increases in the proportion of students of color over the same time period. Based on the admittedly short time span of 2006 to the 2009, it appears that The Chicago School is now enrolling a slightly (two percent) more racially/ethnically diverse student body. The proportion of international students at the school increased by less than one percent over the same time period.

•

Recommendations: Creating a task force (composed of alumni, students, and faculty) and engaging key student organizations (Graduate Student Association for Black Culture, Latino Students and Friends Organization, and Pride) would serve an invaluable role in both recruitment and retention efforts. In addition, gathering information such as international students’ country of origin or racial background, and other optional data for cultural identity (e.g., disability status, sexual orientation) may be helpful to advance our understanding of the diversity of the student body at The Chicago School.

Diverse Faculty and Staff: Broaden and track recruitment and retention efforts and their impact on diversifying and supporting diverse faculty and staff.

•

Findings: Human Resources and the Manager of Adjunct Faculty both reported having made efforts to disseminate position announcements to a diverse audience. These efforts may be related to the increase in the proportionate representation of staff of color; however, the same increase was not evidenced among the faculty. The Manager of Adjunct Faculty reported working collaboratively with academic departments in retaining faculty of color, but no retention efforts were identified by Human Resources. It is important to remember that the data only reflect a two-year period (2007 and 2008).

63

The Chicago School Model of Education

•

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Recommendations: Forging opportunities for Human Resources, the Manager of Adjunct Faculty, and the academic departments to work together along with the Faculty Development and Promotions Committee would go a long way towards furthering recruitment and retention efforts of diverse faculty and staff. Additional outlets, such as listserv and professional organizations in psychology for people of color might offer The Chicago School greater contact and interaction with more diverse individuals in the field of psychology, and may be accessed by engaging current diverse Chicago School faculty.

Fair Admissions Processes: Articulate the goals specific to reducing inequities and biases in the selection process and implement sensitivity and awareness training for admissions staff based on evidenced needs in meeting the identified goals.

•

Findings: The Office of Admission reported being inclusive of various aspects of diversity in the review of applicants for admission. However, no details were provided about how these efforts were implemented in applicant reviews and no data were provided for the applicants that were not admitted into the academic programs. Consequently, interpretation of the impact of the fair review efforts cannot be determined.

•

Recommendations: Articulating the value and vision for administering admissions processes that attempt to reduce inequities and biases in support of the institutional diversity value is strongly recommended. Training to facilitate the implementation of specific efforts towards this end along with developing an admissions decision data tracking may be helpful in determining the success rates of implemented efforts.

Students’ Self-Awareness, Knowledge, and Skills: Develop a school-wide, overarching goal for students’ awareness, knowledge, and skills in relation to multicultural competence.

•

Findings: Four of the six academic departments (Clinical Psychology, Clinical Counseling, Applied Behavior Analysis, Business Psychology) reported having implemented or initiated programs towards increasing students’ multicultural self-awareness, knowledge, and skills over the last year, while two academic departments (Forensic Psychology and School Psychology) did not offer these types of programs. Three of the non-academic areas surveyed (Center for Multicultural and Diversity Studies, Center for International Studies, Multicultural and Diversity Affairs Committee) reported having provided efforts or programs towards this end, while the Office of Applied Professional Practice did not report such a program. Academic programs noted the importance of the Center for Multicultural and Diversity Studies, the Center for International Studies, and the Office of Community Partnerships in contributing to the development of the students’ self-awareness, knowledge, and skills. The goals and objectives of these programs as they relate to diversity or multiculturalism, the nature of the collaborations, and the level of student involvement were not investigated during this study and remain unknown.

•

Recommendations: Identify specific institutional and programmatic learning goals and competencies as related to student development of self-awareness, knowledge, and skills. In addition, all academic programs are recommended to articulate explicit program-specific statements on student development towards multicultural competence to shape student expectations and learning at The Chicago School. It will be important for students to see that administrators, faculty, and staff are committed to multicultural competence and consequently be able to demonstrate their commitment actively alongside students. Role modeling by administrators, faculty, and staff for demonstrated multicultural competence is critical to students’ ownership of building multicultural competence. Active participation and support of multicultural efforts by administrators, faculty, and staff would be one example of this commitment.

Multiculturally Infused Curriculum: Determine what it means to infuse multiculturalism into the curriculum in relation to course content, pedagogy, and evaluation of student learning.

•

Findings: This study did not request curriculum information directly from the academic departments. Two items from course evaluation data may be used to indicate students’ perception of focus on multicultural competence. In response to the item, “This course expands my awareness about personal assumptions or biases I hold regarding others different than myself,” the proportion of “strongly agree” responses ranged from a low of 37 percent in the Business Psychology department to a high of 70 percent in the Clinical Counseling program. In response to the item, “Issues of individual differences are integrated into readings, assignments, and class discussions,” the proportion of “strongly agree” responses ranged from a low of 47 percent in Business Psychology to a high of 77 percent in Clinical Counseling. Students across the academic departments have significantly varying perceptions of the degree of multicultural competence learning and integration in their respective courses. The specific reason(s) for this perception remain unknown and would be a valuable component of building “best practices” of teaching diversity and multicultural competence.

64

The Chicago School Model of Education

•

Preparing Engaged Professionals

Recommendations: Defining what it means to infuse multiculturalism into the curriculum at the academic program and institutional level, followed by the development of a rubric or guiding parameters to facilitate implementation is recommended. Review of the curricula currently in place can facilitate the development of a benchmark and simultaneously identify the tools and skill sets needed to work towards identified goals. The American Psychological Association’s guidelines on multicultural competence provides specifics on how multiculturalism can be incorporated or advanced in the areas of education and training, research, and applied work. Develop faculty training opportunities to support the infusion of multicultural curriculum into courses and integration into their pedagogy.

Development of Multicultural Competence: Define multicultural competence at the institutional level and its correlates for specific academic programs supported by faculty training and development, and assessment processes.

•

Findings: All six of the academic programs and the Office of Placement and Training reported having one or more methods of assessing the degree to which multicultural competence is demonstrated by students. For the students who fail to demonstrate the minimal expected level of multicultural competence, five of the six academic departments (Clinical Psychology, Clinical Counseling, Forensic Psychology, Applied Behavior Analysis, School Psychology) identified one or more remediation efforts. The Business Psychology Department did not report having any type of remediation procedure. Additional efforts are needed to determine the methods currently used by each department to assist students in developing multicultural competence, and consequently, the effectiveness of these methods as assessed by students’ demonstration of multicultural competence.

•

Recommendations: Develop an assessment plan of multicultural competence within and across departments to assess the current status for The Chicago School community with a clearly articulated vision that prioritizes the institutional efforts on multicultural competence. Each program would ideally develop assessment processes to support the content and developmental goals particular to the department and specialization aligned with the school’s overall goal for multicultural competence. Specific efforts may include: a framework for on-going development of multicultural competence for students; determination of how and when competence is to be assessed (upon entry into the program and exiting the program, at the end of each class, pre/post, yearly, thematically); and student multicultural competence development plan (including remediation plans) with minimal expected levels of multicultural competence as operationalized in academic programs.

Limitations and Future Directions This study revealed some important information about efforts toward multicultural competence at The Chicago School, including similarities and differences across the various academic programs and related departments. Given the significant limitations of an online survey format and the variability of responses, these findings are limited in their ability to fully inform efforts to understand and incorporate multicultural competence at The Chicago School. What does appear to be clear, however, is a need for definitional clarity across the institution and an inventory of “best practices” in the specifics of teaching and assessing multicultural competence.

References Fouad, N. A. (2006). Multicultural guidelines: Implementation in an urban counseling psychology program. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 37, 6–13.

65