Community Project Funding/Congressionally Directed Spending - Construction - The University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) is seeking funds to renovate and expand the UAA Psychological Services Center (PSC). The PSC represents a Department of Psychology training clinic for graduate students. The students receive hands-on training in how to offer behavioral health services under the supervision of licensed psychologists. The PSC is housed in the Social Sciences Building and represents an essential component to behavioral health workforce development in Alaska. The clinic offers psychological services to UAA and the larger Alaska community by providing services to low-income and underserved individuals who would otherwise have no access to behavioral healthcare. The PSC Expansion and Renovation Project will allow UAA to double the current clinic footprint and improve workforce development capacity for behavioral health services offered to the Alaska community. Expanding physical capacity translates to improving our capacity to train students and offer services to Alaska’s children and families. As a result, UAA will be able to offer pediatric psychological services and testing. We will also be able to accommodate the growing psychology department programs, significantly expanding training for behavioral health providers in the state of Alaska. Currently our clinic accommodates 12 trainees at a time. The renovation project will include space for up to 22 trainees. Expanding the PSC will increase the number of students the program can train, supervise, and support. Moreover, the expanded spaces will allow greater access to the diverse Alaskan’s who need services. Additional rooms with a pediatric focus will allow our clinic to offer child specific training and improve training in working with children. This will augment UAA’s capacity for working with Alaska’s children and their families while building on our commitment to offer high quality behavior health training in the state. UAA is a public university in Anchorage, Alaska with four community campuses in Southcentral Alaska: Kenai Peninsula College, Kodiak College, Matanuska–Susitna College, and Prince William Sound College. The PSC provides clinical training and supervision for doctoral and masters students who are enrolled in either the PhD in Clinical-Community Psychology or the Masters of Science (MS) in Clinical Psychology. Graduates of these programs seek licensure as Psychologists, Psychological Associates, Professional Counselors, and Licensed Behavior Analysts in Alaska. This training clinic is essential to the Department of Psychology’s mission in providing high-quality graduate training programs and in the provision of services to the larger Alaska community. In addition to the long-standing psychology graduate programs, the Department of Psychology has recently expanded program offerings and is developing new programs which meet the growing behavioral health needs in our community. This includes Applied Behavior Analysis and School Psychology. These program additions are essential to provide behavioral health providers to meet the needs of Alaskans. The proposed expansion of the training clinic is necessary in order to accommodate the growing training needs and programs. Expansion and renovation of the PSC will have a lasting impact on UAA and the larger Alaska community. The Department of Psychology is central to UAA’s mission of behavioral health workforce development in Alaska through the undergraduate program, the MS in Clinical Psychology (both Clinical and Behavior tracks), the PhD in Clinical/Community Psychology and the proposed Masters of Science in School Psychology.
