Message from the Director of Psychology Training
August 26, 2026
Congratulations on being at this point in your graduate training! Thank you for your interest in the Health Service Psychology Doctoral Internship Program at the University of Chicago Medicine (UCM). We are pleased to provide you with our updated 2027-2028 internship information. We are accredited by the American Psychological Association through 2029.
Our health service psychology doctoral internship program is based in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Chicago, in the Adult and Child sections. The internship has been an important component of departmental training for many years and is integrated within the interdisciplinary educational mission of the Department and the larger Medical Center. Our internship is designed to train health service psychologists for entry level practice in academic settings. The hallmarks of our program include socially-responsive, evidence-based approaches to assessment, intervention, and consultation and the integration of science and practice. We provide training that focuses on breadth through our general Adult and Child clinics, while allowing our interns to develop an area of focus through their tracks. Most importantly, our internship is individualized and can be tailored to meet our interns’ specific training goals. Each intern receives at least four hours of individual supervision each week and attends several hours of didactics designed to enhance acquisition of profession-wide competencies in health service psychology. In addition, our program promotes the development of scholarly interests through the availability of protected research time to work on dissertation completion or collaborative projects with training faculty. We believe that we offer a challenging and supportive setting for obtaining doctoral internship training in Clinical Psychology.
Our Department has grown significantly in the past few years. It has been exciting to welcome new staff and faculty and observe the expansion of our clinical, educational, and research programs. However, adequate work space has emerged as one of our greatest challenges. Clinical care occurs in person and via telehealth. Our program is primarily in person and on site, although we do offer the flexibility of telehealth to patients who request these services. We provide didactics and supervision in person unless video formats are indicated for convenience, flexibility, and/or safety. In our program, we value interprofessional collaboration, socialization among interns and with our faculty, development of a support system for our trainees, and a general sense of community. Our large and dynamic healthcare system recognizes that telehealth, telesupervision, and hybrid work environments will continue to evolve.
The Health Service Psychology Doctoral Internship at the University of Chicago Medicine is comprised of four tracks: Adult/Health Psychology, Adult Neuropsychology, Child/Pediatric Psychology, and Pediatric Neuropsychology. We will be recruiting and matching with one intern in the Adult Neuropsychology, Child/Pediatric Psychology and Pediatric Neuropsychology Tracks, and two interns in the Adult/Health track. You may apply to only one track which should be specified in your cover letter. Applicants who apply to more than one track will be disqualified from both tracks.
Our application deadline is Sunday, November 1, 2026 (11:59 pm EST). You will be contacted by email if you are selected for an interview. We will conduct virtual interviews on the following days in December 2026: Friday 12/4/26, Monday 12/7/27, and Friday 12/11/26. (In the interest of equity, interview slots on 12/11/26 will be reserved for applicants who are located in time zones WEST of Central Standard Time as this day’s schedule will have a later start time.) Our annual stipend is $48,548 and is offered as part of a comprehensive package of benefits.
Before deciding to apply to our program, please review our brochure very carefully. We want you to fully appreciate the structure of our program and what we have to offer. We hope that you will apply to our internship program because you believe it is aligned with your professional goals for training and your future career development. Should you match with us, we will, in turn, work to provide you with the skills necessary to become a health service psychologist who is able to integrate science and practice in an academic environment serving a diverse population.
Read on for more details about our program! We wish you luck as you navigate this challenging process and complete your degree. We appreciate the time you will invest in completing the application to our program and promise to thoroughly review your materials. We look forward to learning more about you and possibly “meeting” you. If you have questions that are not answered in our written materials, feel free to contact us by email. Please note that we do not offer informational meetings via phone or video prior to our program’s formal interviews later in the season.
Sincerely,
Shona N. Vas, Ph.D., ABPP
Director, Psychology Training
Director, Cognitive-Behavior Therapy Program
Associate Professor, Psychiatry & Behavioral Neuroscience
Contact Information: svas@bsd.uchicago.edu
Note: The Commission on Accreditation requires that all APA accredited internship programs provide the standardized tables of admissions, support, and initial placement data. These tables are updated annually for the Psychology Doctoral Internship Program at the University of Chicago Medicine. Questions about our program’s accreditation status may be directed to:
American Psychological Association
Office of Program Consultation and Accreditation
750 First Street NE,
Washington, DC 20002-4242
Phone: (202) 336-5979
Web: http://www.apa.org/ed/accreditation
