Overview

The department's graduate programs have been developed to produce highly competent clinical psychologists who will be practitioners and scholars, knowledgeable in clinical psychology with the skills to integrate the psychological and spiritual understandings of the person to competently intervene to enhance human welfare.

Established in 1977, the M.A. program trains students to become highly competent mental health professionals with a responsibly eclectic clinical perspective for work with individuals, couples, families and groups. As part of this training, faculty instill a vision for creative ministry informed by Christian tradition and by professional theory and research, and carried to the widest possible community throughout the world.

The doctoral program was established in 1993 and has been APA accredited since 1998. It has prepared clinicians to serve in a variety of both traditional and nontraditional settings including family therapy, rural psychology settings, and neuropsychology utilizing the practitioner-scholar model combined with quality clinical instruction, theological training and practicum opportunities. Practitioner-scholar training is necessarily clinically intensive with clinical experiences closely tied with classroom and research work.

In both programs, every effort is made to integrate theory with practice. Thus, both programs have been developed with the goal of training future practitioners by modeling a commitment to professional practice as service with a balanced approach to spiritual, personal, professional, and interpersonal growth and development. Psy.D. Handbook (PDF format)

The Doctoral program conforms to the Community Covenant and the Statement of Faith of Wheaton College which provide a framework for our life together as an academic and spiritual community. For information on our Christian distinctives, please see our link to the Community Covenant and Statement of Faith, listed below.

Community Covenant and Statement of Faith

The Psy.D. program strives to be open about its program data. If you would like to learn more about program statistics, click here.

The Psychology Department also strives to keep in contact with graduates of the M.A. and Psy.D. programs. This allows the department to stay informed about the types of settings and activities in which our graduates are involved and how we can best anticipate the academic and training needs of our current and future students based on that information. Contact with our graduates also allows the department to perform regular program evaluations in order to improve on and promote a standard of excellence in education and training. To view the results of our most recent alumni survey, click here.

Contact Information:
Psychology Department
Billy Graham Center
630-752-5104
Email: psychology@wheaton.edu

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