The Dean Hope Center for Educational and Psychological Services (DHCEPS) is a training clinic which provides practical experiences for graduate students in several licensure track programs. Both Master’s and Doctoral students in School Psychology, Clinical Psychology, and Counseling Psychology are required to follow the ethical principles and code of conduct developed by the American Psychological Association. Similarly, students in the Reading Specialist program are required to follow the Code of Ethics of the International Reading Association. Collectively, our students are required to maintain strict confidentiality of their work through the Dean Hope Center.
The Dean Hope Center is also committed to practice the standard of HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) in dealing with the privacy of their clients. All contact with the Dean Hope Center staff as well as all records and information maintained by the center are kept confidential. While our students are gaining practical experience, they are assigned to one or two supervisors (a Doctoral student and a licensed professor) with which they work closely on each case. In order to ensure the quality of practice, many supervisors require the sessions to be both audio and video recorded. However, written consent from the client, or their guardian if they are younger than eighteen years of age, is required. Sessions will be reviewed only by the supervisors or professors for the purpose of feedback and improvement. All other client information will not be released to any third party outside of the center unless a written request is provided by the client or their guardian.
Originally the Dean Hope Center for Educational and Psychological Services was known as the Center for Psychological Services, and was a practicum site for students solely in the areas of Clinical and Counseling Psychology. Approximately 14 years ago, the Center was merged with the Child Study Center which was a practicum site for students in the School Psychology and Reading Specialist programs. At this time, the Center was renamed The Center for Educational and Psychological Services. In 1999, Teachers College hired the center’s first full-time director and in 2005, the center received a generous donation that allowed for a full renovation of their facilities. The center was renamed once again to the Dean Hope Center for Educational and Psychological Services.
The Dean-Hope Center for Educational and Psychological Services (DHCEPS) has become an integral part of the teaching and training programs in a wide range of programs at Teachers College: including Clinical Psychology, Counseling Psychology, School Psychology, Special Education and the Reading Specialist program. The Dean Hope Center serves primarily as a practicum training facility offering the opportunity to integrate theoretical coursework with the required practicum experience within a multidisciplinary setting. Through these students, the training is provided under the professional oversight of highly qualified psychologists and educators. The center offers psychological and educational services to individuals, couples, and families in the New York area. The emphasis is on respecting and working with clients within the framework of cultural values and respecting the person’s worldview. DHCEPS is strongly committed to maintaining a liaison with community agencies in the Teachers College neighborhood area such as schools, community-based organizations, hospitals, and mental health clinics, to ensure a flow of clients to the center while supporting these agencies in the services that they provide to the people in the community.
The Dean Hope Center is stocked with an extensive list of resources which benefits students from many different programs offered through Teachers College. Materials include testing materials, psychotherapy videotapes, reading materials. All of the resources are centralized and available to any students in practicum at the center. These resources have exponentially improved the students’ training opportunities by having access to resources located right in the center.
The Dean Hope Center has established ongoing relationships with agencies and schools within the surrounding community. Some of the center’s contacts include the Bloomingdale Family Program, the Furman Counseling Center at Barnard College, St Luke’s Hospital, Columbia Presbyterian, the Harlem Children Zone, the African-American Male Initiative and within many public schools in the neighborhood. While our graduate students benefit from the opportunity of working with a diverse population, clients benefit from resources many times inaccessible to them. We believe that by establishing this inverse relationship, both the students and the clients will benefit from their experience.
The Dean Hope Center has recently begun a research initiative to collect outcome measures. Once a database is generated, students and faculty members will be able to use this data for presentations, dissertations, and other projects.
Recently, the Dean Hope Center received a small grant from the American Psychological Association: Committee of Ethnic Minority Affairs to address the need of students interested in receiving training to work with linguistic minority clients. The proposed project consisted of providing bilingual Spanish-speaking graduate students from Clinical Psychology and Counseling Psychology the opportunity to work with Spanish-speaking clients. The long-term goal of the project is to expand this opportunity to include students interested in working with other linguistic minority clients.
Recently, the director of the Dean Hope Center, Dr. Dinelia Rosa, has assumed an active role in providing support for the Teachers College students’ mental health well-being through participation in the Teachers College Psychological Emergency Response Team (PERT). Dr. Rosa also works with the students from Clinical and Counseling Psychology programs to organize a Teachers College Depression Screening Day, Alcohol Screening Day and Eating Awareness events to promote the importance of well-being on the Teachers College campus.
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National Suicide Prevention Lifeline On July 16, the 10-digit National Suicide Prevention Lifeline transitioned to 988 —an easy-to-remember 3-digit number for 24/7 crisis care. |
988 |
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1-866-370-4483 |
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1-888-NYC-WELL (1-888-692-9355)
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