Recruiting the next generation of marriage and family therapists through undergraduate internships

Although Marriage and Family Therapists (MFTs) earn a variety of mental hea lth degrees and receive their training in MFT at different times within the ir professional careers, there is an increase in the number of people earni ng their first graduate degree in this field (Doherty & Simmons, 1996). The re also has been a rapid increase in the number of Master's programs accred ited by the Commission on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Edu cation (COAMFTE), coupled with a decrease (at least in our experience) in t he average age of applicants to graduate MFT programs. All of this suggests that training and recruiting new MFTs at the undergraduate level will be i mportant for the future of our profession. Although Smith and Allgood (1991 ) review several methods of recruiting undergraduates, we could not find an y other discussions about how graduate MFT faculty are recruiting from unde rgraduate populations. Developing and sharing undergraduate recruitment str ategies are thus important tasks for the field. This paper describes an und ergraduate clinical internship in our MFT doctoral program that we devised to help introduce undergraduates to the profession of family therapy. Our doctoral MFT program, like many similar graduate curriculums, is housed in a department of human development. This department offers two undergrad uate courses of study, or "options," for majors: early childhood education and human services, While there is a required course in community programs for families, there is no undergraduate course in MFT. Aside from our responsibilities in the graduate program, the MFT faculty al so teach undergraduate courses in the human services option and serve as ad visors to human services undergraduates. The human-services option itself i s designed to provide a comprehensive education for those interested in a v ariety of possible careers. It gives undergraduates a theoretical and exper iential grounding in child and adult development, family and relational dyn amics, human sexuality, and family and individual support programs, with co mplementary studies in psychology and sociology, biology, statistics, and l iberal arts core courses. For over 20 years, human services students also h ave been required to undertake a field study during which they typically wo rk as volunteers in a wide range of public and private agencies. Consistent with Smith and Allgood's (1991) report, our MFT faculty and our doctoral students have developed several methods of introducing MFT ideas: advising, course work, guest lectures, and speaking at undergraduate organi zations. However, our most enjoyable-and probably most influential-work com es from our family therapy field study placements for human services studen ts-our undergraduate internships-in our doctoral training clinic.