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regarding appropriate dress, professional demeanor, clarity of presentation, and respect
for clients and colleagues.
Upon completion of successfully passing the public presentation, the faculty review
committee considers all of the materials presented in light of:
The evaluation rubrics attached to those materials;
The manner in which they were presented;
The overall professionalism of the presenter, including dress, manner, tone,
etc.; final defense, and
The manner and substance of the ways in which the presenter handled
questions, criticisms, theoretical disagreements, or ethical concerns raised by
reviewers or members of the audience during the course of the review.
Portfolio and Exam Timeline Information
For students to remain within the three year completion of the program, they will submit
their portfolio during the 6
th
term, and show readiness to proceed with their Applied
Clinical Project their 3
rd
year; failure to do so means that a student will need additional
time in the program. The program has a maximum of 5 years to complete.
3. Applied Clinical Project (ACP)
The Applied Clinical Project (ACP) should be seen as the capstone experience of the
D.M.F.T. degree process. The ACP is the student’s demonstration of his/her ability to carry
out a high quality, professional program of systemically based treatment. The ACP should
be a project the student carries out under SHSS faculty supervision from concept, to
proposal, to implementation, and finally through eventual evaluation of the effectiveness
of the program. An ACP is viewed as a career launching undertaking. At the time of its
culmination, students should be able to articulate and demonstrate to other mental health
professionals their unique area of systems based practice expertise.
Students select a DFT full-time faculty supervisor and one other full-time
faculty reviewer
for their ACP only after they have completed the majority of their coursework and have
successfully passed their Clinical Portfolio. All proposals, data collection, and analysis
toward the completion of the ACP must be conducted under faculty supervision.
At the end of the ACP, students will develop a professional quality presentation and review
of their entire project to a faculty committee and the public. The faculty committee will
consist of their project supervisor, faculty reviewer, and any other students and terminally
degreed professionals that the student wishes to invite. However, only full time faculty of
SHSS will have the final say on the acceptability of the final product and its final
presentation. Students register for a minimum of 6 credit hours of Applied Clinical Project.
Students must continue to register for ACP credit
hours until they complete, successfully
defend, and finalize their project. This may entail taking more than the minimum Applied
Clinical Project credit hours stipulated in the catalog. If for some reason, students cannot
continue working on their ACP, they must apply in writing to their faculty supervisor and
Program Director for a leave of absence, which must be in place three weeks prior to the
start of a trimester. If a student requests a leave for longer than one term or takes a
second term-long leave, they may not be able, upon their return, to continue with the
faculty supervisor with whom they had earlier been working. If a student requests a leave
for longer than three consecutive terms and has not registered for the following term, they
are considered inactive and would need to reapply to the program. If a Leave of Absence is
requested and approved, this does not extend the 7 year timeframe for completing the
degree program.
