NEW Clinical Psychology Program at the University of California, Irvine

NEW Clinical Psychology Program at the University of California, Irvine

The University of California at Irvine, Department of Psychological Science will be accepting applications this fall for a new concentration in Clinical Psychology to begin September 2021. The Clinical Ph.D. concentration will offer training guided by a clinical science model to prepare future leaders for careers as clinical scholars and mental health care leaders. 

The Department of Psychological Science has existing areas in Development, Health, Social and Personality Psychology, and Affective Science. Students are also able to work with faculty from within these concentrations whose work has relevance to clinical science.

Students will gain from the interdisciplinary orientation of the School of Social Ecology with faculty/programs in UCI’s Schools of Medicine, Public Health, Nursing, Law, Education, Social Sciences, Biological Sciences, Arts, and Engineering, and UCI’s Institute for Clinical and Translational Science and the Institute for Memory Impairment and Neurological Disorders. Training will feature a close partnership with Psychiatry and Human Behavior as well as community mental health agencies. Additionally, the School of Social Ecology houses the Institute for Interdisciplinary Salivary Bioscience Research, the Center for Psychology and Law, and the Newkirk Center for Science and Society, and UCI’s Campus Center for Neuroimaging. In addition to these educational and research resources, as well as being consistently ranked as a top 10 public university by US News and World Report, the UCI campus is located between Los Angeles and San Diego, and is just minutes from the Pacific ocean.

Core clinical faculty include:

• Jessica Borelli, PhD (developmental psychopathology, attachment, emotion, prevention of mental health problems in children and adolescents)

• Susan Charles, PhD (emotional processes across the adult life span, subjective experience and cognitive processes, health and emotion)

• Kate Kuhlman, PhD (developmental psychopathology, psychoneuroimmunology, psychoneuroendocrinology, early life stress, and adolescent depression)

• Elizabeth Martin, PhD and Interim Director of Clinical Training (emotion and social functioning in individuals with psychosis and psychosis-risk)

• Daniel Nation, PhD (clinical neuropsychology)

• Ray Novaco, PhD (anger, violence, stress, trauma, and interventions)

• Stephen Schueller, PhD (clinical psychology, depression, mHealth, technology, implementation science, treatment and prevention, positive psychology)

• Jason Schiffman, PhD. (identification and prevention of early psychosis among individuals at clinical high-risk). (Joining the faculty as Director of Clinical Training fall of 2021)

• Alyson Zalta, PhD (clinical psychology, trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, resilience, treatment & prevention)

The program will prepare students for a broad range of high-demand careers. These include university faculty positions and research tracks; positions in behavioral medicine and health psychology in medical schools and healthcare organizations; positions as clinical psychologists in public- and private-sector mental health facilities; positions in forensic psychology; and applied research positions in companies, organizations, and programs that address mental health.

As a minority serving institution, UCI is committed to attracting doctoral students who can help meet the mental health needs of a racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse population. We seek to attract a diverse applicant pool to increase student diversity and diversity in clinical psychology more broadly. 

Notably, following the American Psychological Association’s timeline for accreditation, our program will likely have obtained accreditation status before the graduation of our inaugural class (i.e., students can expect to graduate from an APA accredited program).

For more information, please contact Elizabeth Martin, PhD, Interim Director of Clinical Training at emartin8@uci.edu and please share this information with anyone you think may be interested.