Psychology majors now have one more reason to come to UCF — the Counseling Center's Pre-Doctoral Internship Program in Professional Psychology is now officially accredited by the American Psychological Association.

Karen Hofmann, a licensed psychologist and associate director of the training program, said that the Counseling Center wanted to set a higher standard for the school and its program. Offering a pre-doctoral internship in psychology in addition to a master's degree program gives more opportunities to their students.

"There's no standard for a master's degree other than accumulating enough hours," Hofmann said. "The pre-doctoral internship in psychology is a lot more complicated, and there's a national structure."

The APA holds aspiring programs to a complicated structure; its book of guidelines is 30-pages long. The actual application, according to APA's official website, is a self study in which the program prepares a report that evaluates its goals and indicates that it meets accreditation standards. A site visit is set to ensure that everything in the self study was accurate. Then, a decision is made.

Hofmann, who began her job as associate director in 2006, helped the program become a member of the Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers in 2007. APPIC not only connected interns to the training program, but it provided a basis for their accreditation.

"APPIC is also an application process, it's just not as rigorous as APA, so that gave us a good indication that we were on the right track and that everything was in place," Hofmann said. "It was our first milestone."

After that, the program started to build its profile and began its own self study. Hofmann said that even with the help of her training committee, it still took two summers to complete the study. The program submitted its report a year ago, had its site visit in June and heard its approved decision in November. The process for a simple title of accreditation took a total of almost four years.

However, that simple title comes with benefits. Susan Zlotlow, director of the Office of Program Consultation and Accreditation at APA, said that in some jurisdictions, an accredited program is required for jobs and internships.

"The purpose of accreditation is first and foremost to protect the public by giving them quality education and good services," Zlotlow said.

The APA also notifies students through its website when a program has become accredited, drawing more attention to UCF.

Hofmann said that before the program was accredited, it had about 44 applicants. A week after it announced its accreditation, the numbers jumped to 95. Currently, the pre-doctoral program only accepts two interns for a year-long paid internship in which they could earn about $25,000 working full time. The program hopes that the accreditation will help it earn more funding, which will allow them to accept more applicants.

Other than an increase in applicants, Hofmann believes that being accredited makes the program more appealing to professional staff and makes it more likely to recruit a higher standard of staff. Having a higher-quality staff will ultimately result in better trainers for interns and good counseling for students in need.

"This national accreditation also helps put UCF on the map as one of the top internships that's being sought after," Hofmann said. "I think that this is something UCF as a whole will be proud of."

Though the program is just toward the end of accepting applicants for the fall 2012-spring 2013 internship, interested students can find information at http://counseling.sdes.ucf.edu/training-doctoral#a7.