Mission Statement

USC aims to produce culturally competent clinical scientists who will contribute to the dissemination and creation of knowledge.

At USC, we believe it is essential to understand context and culture – of our students, our clients, our research participants, our faculty, and our staff.  Consistent with the definition in APA policy (APA Standards of Accreditation, p. 5), we define culture and diversity broadly as including, but not being limited to: “age, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, language, national origin, race, religion, culture, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status.”  As a program, we work together to promote an environment characterized by inclusion and support.

Our program believes in, and strives to work toward, the following aspirations:

1) Development of Personal Awareness:

We believe it is important to develop a personal understanding of how one’s own cultural background and worldview (including conscious and unconscious biases toward any cultural groups) influence the way we think about research and clinical concepts, and the way we understand and interact with our peers, colleagues, and clients.

2) Development of Cultural Knowledge:

We believe it is critical to increase one’s understanding of current theoretical and empirical knowledge to include an understanding of how culture and diversity interact with all of our professional activities, including research, training, supervision, consultation, and clinical practice.

3) Development and Application of Cultural Skills:

We also feel it is vitally important to be able to combine one’s awareness of one’s own cultural background and relevant societal influences (e.g., discrimination) with the knowledge base acquired on individual and cultural differences throughout training at USC, to integrate and apply this knowledge and perspective to clinical cases, research paradigms, and other professional roles.

4) Development of Competence in Working with Different Worldviews:

We believe it is important for all students and faculty to be able to work effectively with individuals whose group membership, demographic characteristics, or worldviews may be different from, or even in conflict with, their own.  We fully endorse APA’s recent statement regarding preparing professionals to serve a diverse public (for the full statement, see: http://www.apa.org/ed/graduate/diversity-preparation.aspx?tab=1).

5) Cycle of Feedback and Response to Diversity-Related Concerns:

We believe a central component to developing a supportive and inclusive environment with respect to diversity at USC is feedback and program responsivity to concerns raised by any member of the program.

Program Initiatives and Actions

To accomplish these goals, we take a variety of actions as a program, including the following:

    • Our students and faculty come from an array of different backgrounds: ethnicities, socioeconomic circumstances, sexual orientations, national origins, languages spoken, etc.  We view this diversity as a significant strength of our program, and we encourage students and faculty from diverse backgrounds (broadly defined) to apply for positions at USC.
    • We feel strongly that a welcoming environment where culture can be discussed openly, and where students and faculty are able to learn and contribute as clinical scientists without threat of discrimination or exploitation, is of paramount importance.
    • We take a developmental approach to student skill and competency acquisition and support individual students in the process of developing competencies to work with diverse populations. We respect the right of students to maintain their personal belief systems while acquiring such professional competencies. An important piece of this competency development is the process of personal introspection involving the exploration of personal beliefs, attitudes, and values, which all members of our program aspire to model.
    • Consistent with recent perspectives and research on developing cultural competence (e.g., Sue & Sue, 2015), we are expanding our current training to include opportunities to reflect on one’s own cultural lens, prior history with various cultural groups, and issues of privilege and oppression, and how these concepts all influence the activities we engage in as clinical scientists.
    • The content of each clinical core course is designed to address substantive issues of how culture interfaces with the content area being studied, i.e., how issues of diversity are pertinent to diagnosis, assessment, and intervention.
    • Our research roundtable series plays an important role in diversity education by providing additional exposure to research involving diverse client groups and research directly evaluating the role of culture.  These seminars also provide an avenue for exposure to clinical case conferences that comment on diversity and its role in the case.
    • We expect that a student’s research and scholarship (e.g., master’s project, dissertation project, qualifying exam paper, and other research projects) will address some aspect of diversity.  For example, this may include considering how particular aspects of one’s sample may affect the interpretation of the results or inform the theory being tested, or directly considering how cultural group membership, attitudes, experiences, etc., may play an important role in one’s area of research.
    • We support students and encourage them to bring up cultural and diversity issues in the context of their research.  Engaging faculty and other students in conversations about cultural influences not only adheres to APA’s ethical principle of actively cultivating cultural competence, but also continually develops critical thinking skills and personal awareness and reflection, all of which are fundamental in becoming a skilled clinical scientist.
    • Our on-site training clinic, the Psychology Services Center (PSC), draws clients from the diverse Los Angeles community, which allows students to work with clients from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, sexual orientations, gender identities, ages, and ethnicities, amongst other forms of diversity.
    • Training to work with diverse clients is integral to the curriculum and consists of both didactic coursework and practical training.  Thus, students entering our program should have no reasonable expectation of being exempted from having any particular category of potential clients assigned to them for the duration of training.
    • We encourage students to evaluate their clinical experiences from multiple cultural lenses and request, as needed, to work with specific client groups to broaden their experience with diverse groups.
    • Within supervision, we encourage open dialogues on topics such as how diversity can impact client engagement, clients’ understanding of the reasons they are seeking therapy compared to our understanding, case conceptualization, whether the type of treatment identified is suitable for a client given their particular background (and how the literature may or may not inform this decision), and any client-therapist differences in culture or worldview that may impact treatment or the lens used by the therapist.  Students are strongly encouraged to bring such issues to the forefront in group and individual supervision on clinical cases.
    • The clinical science program at USC has a commitment to helping students navigate conflicts that arise between their worldviews, beliefs or religious values and our commitment to offering culturally responsive psychological services to all members of the public, including those from traditionally marginalized groups.  For example, a student may experience strong negative reactions toward clients/patients who are of a particular sexual orientation, religious tradition, age, or disability status.

The Science Behind Our Philosophy on Diversity

As clinical scientists, we believe in the importance of providing state-of-the art training consistent with current standards of practice in our field and grounded in empirical work.  We list here some research that informed our thinking about diversity training at USC.

  • It has been well-established that endorsing egalitarian views (i.e., not having an explicit bias) is not protective against learning stereotypes in our society (i.e., being equally able to list what others might think about individuals from a particular group; see for example, the seminal study by Devine, 1989). Research using implicit measures (i.e., not relying on one’s conscious report of cultural views) has found that behaviors toward particular groups are associated with scores on implicit bias measures (e.g., meta-analysis from Greenwald et al., 2015), and that pro-White biases can be observed even in the absence of biases toward other groups. Even in the absence of explicit bias, implicit bias has been shown to impact healthcare-related decision making (Sabin et al., 2012) and therapists’ predictions of the working alliance (Katz et al., 2014).

  • As noted above, implicit bias is important not only because it can unintentionally affect thought processes and decision-making related to clinical care, but also because implicit bias is associated with real-world behavior.  Scores on implicit bias measures have been associated with clinician behaviors such as non-verbal indicators of friendliness (Dovidio et al., 2002) and lower levels of patient-centered care (Blair et al., 2013). In addition, clients report experiences of microaggressions in therapy (i.e., everyday verbal, nonverbal, or behavioral expressions of bias), and when they occur it is detrimental to the working alliance between client and therapist (e.g., Owen et al., 2010; Shelton & Delgado-Romero, 2011).

  • Longstanding work within competency development (a broad field concerned with how one develops the ability to do numerous jobs) has suggested that competencies have 3 main components: attitudes, knowledge, and skills (e.g., Kaslow, 2004). APA, along with 30 other psychology groups, had a conference to determine by consensus those competencies most central to the practice of psychology (Kaslow et al., 2004).  The Competencies Conference workgroup considers the domain of individual and cultural diversity as a foundational skill that is required to develop competency in functional domains, such as research and intervention (Rodolfa et al., 2005).  APA Guidelines (e.g., for Multicultural Education, Training and Research; for Psychological Practice with Older Adults; Psychological Practice with Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Clients; Psychological Practice with Girls and Women; Assessment and Interventions with Persons with Disabilities; Psychological Practice with Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming People) and others (Daniel et al., 2004; Sue & Sue, 2015) suggest that developing personal awareness of one’s own biases and experiences – including factors such as oppression, privilege, and discrimination – in combination with learning about the empirical work related to cultural values and psychological factors associated with various cultural groups is necessary for the successful application of culturally competent work as a psychologist.  Attempts to validate these models of cultural competence development are still in their infancy, but research suggests there are promising improvements on patient and client health outcomes (Truong et al., 2014).  Programs grounded in competency development and emphasizing developing competency in individual and cultural diversity are consistent with the current standards of practice in psychology (e.g., APA Standards of Accreditation).

Committee on Leadership In Multicultural Advancement & Training for Everyone

In June 2020, the Committee on Leadership In Multicultural Advancement & Training for Everyone (CLIMATE) was initiated in response to the frustration and outrage regarding the social injustice and brutality facing Black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities. The central goal of CLIMATE is to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion in the Department of Psychology at USC. https://dornsife.usc.edu/psyc/diversity-equity-inclusion-and-social-justice/

  • APA Standards of Accreditation for Health Service Psychology. http://www.apa.org/ed/accreditation/about/policies/standards-of-accreditation.pdf

    Blair, I.V., Steiner, J.F., Fairclough, D.L., Hanratty, R., Price, D.W., Hirsh, H.K., Wright, L.A., Bronsert, M., Karimkhani, E., Magid, D.J., & Havranek, E.P. (2013). Clinicians’ implicit ethnic/racial bias and perceptions of care among Black and Latino patients. Annuals of Family Medicine, 11(1), 43-52.

    Daniel, J.H., Roysircar, G., Abeles, N., & Boyd, C. (2004). Individual and cultural-diversity competency: focus on the therapist. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 60(7), 755-770.

    Devine, P.G. (1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: their automatic and controlled components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56(1), 5–18.

    Dovidio, J.F., Kawakami, K., & Gaertner, S.L. (2002). Implicit and explicit prejudice and interracial interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(1), 62–68.

    Greenwald, A.G., Banaji, M.R., & Nosek, B.A. (2015). Statistically small effects of the Implicit Association Test can have societally large effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(4), 553-561.

    Kaslow, N.J. (2004). Competencies in professional psychology. American Psychologist, 59(8), 774-781.

    Kaslow, N. J., Borden, K. A., Collins, F. L., Forrest, L., Illfelder-Kaye, J., Nelson, P. D., et al. (2004). Competencies conference: Future directions in education and credentialing in professional psychology. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 60, 699 –712.

    Katz, A.D., & Hoyt, W.T. (2014). The influence of multicultural counseling competence and anti-Black prejudice on therapists’ outcome expectancies. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 61(2), 299-305.

    Owen, J., Tao, K., & Rodolfa, E. (2010). Microaggressions and women in short-term therapy: Initial evidence. Counseling Psychologist, 38(7), 923-946.

    Rodolfa, E., Bent, R., Eisman, E., Nelson, P., Rehm, L., Ritchie, P. (2005). A cube model for competency development: Implications for psychology educators and regulators. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 36(4), 347-354.

    Sabin, J.A., & Greenwald, A.G. (2012). The influence of implicit bias on treatment recommendations for 4 common pediatric conditions: pain, urinary tract infection, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and asthma. American Journal of Public Health, 102(5), 988–995.

    Shelton, K., & Delgado-Romero, E.A. (2011). Sexual orientation microaggressions: The experience of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer clients in psychotherapy. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 58(2), 210-221.

    Truong, M., Paradies, Y., & Priest, N. (2014). Interventions to improve cultural competency in healthcare: a systematic review of reviews. BMC health services research, 14(1), 1-10.

    Sue, D.W., & Sue, D. (2015). Counseling the culturally diverse: Theory & practice. (7th ed). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons.