Gunning for Researchers

Psychology training program produces top-notch academicians

They call it “The Mississippi Mafia.”

But do they deal in gun-running, illegal alcohol or underground gambling?Fuhgeddaboutit!

This network of clinical psychologists peddles research, treatment manuals, books and classroom instruction.

Over the decades, interns who have gone through the Clinical Psychology Residency Training Consortium at the Medical Center created the mafia name as a way to spread the word about the exceptional training they received in a family atmosphere.

Ten full-time clinical psychologists in the Division of Psychology and eight clinical psychologists at the G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans’ Affairs Medical Center form the consortium.

This year, the program celebrates its 45th year of guiding clinical psychologists on their journey into academia, providing comprehensive mentoring on not just research, but how to write grants and negotiate salaries. Although a few venture into clinical practice, most interns teach and conduct research at universities across the country and abroad.

Those are the students the consortium wants.

“We train the people who are going to be consumers and producers of research,” said Dr. David Elkin, associate professor of psychology and director of the psychology residency program. “They produce the literature that changes the way psychologists treat their patients.”

Going to the mattresses

The internships, currently nine slots, are highly competitive and residents from as far as the University of Hawaii and the University of Massachusetts and as near as the University of Mississippi and the University of Southern Mississippi have come here. Students in their fifth and final year of graduate school must complete an internship to earn the Ph.D., and UMMC is where many want to do it.

A graduate of the training program, Dr. Greg Fabiano, an assistant professor at the University of Buffalo, received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, largely in recognition of the grant he wrote while at UMMC. The award is the nation’s highest honor for professionals at the outset of their scientific research careers.

The program’s history and success drew Dr. Scott Coffey, associate professor of psychology and director of the Division of Psychology, and his wife, Dr. Julie Schumacher, assistant professor of psychology, to UMMC in 2004. They lead the consortium’s grant-writing seminar.

“One of the main reasons we’re here is because of the training program,” Coffey said. “Not only is the program producing outstanding future academicians, it also serves as a magnet for current researchers.

“This place is a machine.”

Over the past five years, new faculty in the Division of Psychology obtained about $4.5 million in National Institutes of Health grants.

The “godfathers” of clinical psychology

The Clinical Psychology Residency Program’s sterling reputation began in 1969 when the “godfathers” of the internship designed it, according to Coffey.

Dr. Stewart Agras, emeritus professor of psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine, was the first chair of the UMMC Department of Psychiatry. He and Dr. David Barlow, professor of psychiatry and psychology at Boston University, who was a professor of psychology at UMMC at the time, developed a program where psychologists were on an equal basis with psychiatrists.

“That does not sound at all radical today, but this was at the time when the main role of a psychologist in a Department of Psychiatry was to perform psychological testing,” Agras said. “This allowed us to bring the clinical and research expertise of psychology and psychiatry together, melding a neglected basic science at the time (psychology) with the more biologically oriented views of psychiatry at the time.”

Barlow, founder and director emeritus of the Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders at Boston University, said the winning combination is what makes the Division of Psychology program here “one of the top three programs in the country.”

“And the fact the current director of the program, Dr. Elkin, is the son of one of my psychology interns in those early days attests to the continuity of this excellence,” Barlow said.

Respecting the family business

Elkin admits he feels an extra weight on his shoulders to ensure the program’s success because his father was a product of the internship. Graduate programs around the country direct their best students to the program, often because they completed their internships here.

“When you come to Jackson, you become a part of a family,” Elkin said. “That sense of family and that sense of academics is why they direct their best students to us.

“The folks who come through here are stellar.”

- Patrice Sawyer Guilfoyle

2009-02-17 00:00:00 18840