School Psychology Major, PhD

Every PhD school psychology student is expected to meet the University of Tennessee school psychology training program’s knowledge and skill requirements. Opportunities for students to meet these requirements will occur in the classroom and during field experiences. The school psychology faculty, along with current and previous students, practicum and internship supervisors, and various other groups who help ensure quality control within the training programs, have contributed to the development of the curricula. Various accrediting and curricula oversight agencies (i.e., APA, NASP, SDE-Tennessee) have their own specific goals and objectives. The School Psychology Handbook, published by the Educational Psychology and Counseling Department describes how the University of Tennessee school psychology training program attempts to meet the goals and objectives of these various training groups.

The University of Tennessee PhD program is designed to provide graded, sequential, and hierarchical training across the following areas.

• Professional school psychology. 
• Consultation and intervention. 
• Assessment. 
• Research and statistics. 
• Psychoeducational core. 
• Field experience and professional practice.

Requirements

Students with an undergraduate degree who are admitted to the PhD School Psychology Program will typically take 5 years of full time study to complete the program. In some instances students, with a relevant Ed.S. or Master’s degree, can complete the program in 3-4 years. All students must complete a minimum of 24 dissertation hours and a 2000 hour internship at the end of their training, with 600 hours in a school/educational setting. The Graduate School requires students without a graduate degree to take 48 hours of graduate course credit and those with a graduate degree to take 24 hours of graduate course credit. However, to meet School Psychology Program requirements students are almost always required to take more hours than the minimums required by the Graduate School.