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The Institute for Autism Research – summerMAX program is accepting applications until March 15 for Research Clinical Interns for the 2023 summerMAX program. The Research Clinical Intern plays a critical role in delivering the treatment programs to children with autism.

Responsibilities include facilitating intensive social skills groups, leading cooperative activities, instituting a structured behavioral program, collecting data, and data entry.

The summerMAX program serves children from seven to twelve years old. The 2023 program will be conducted from 8:50 a.m. – 4:10 p.m., Monday through Friday from June 26 – July 28 at the Institute for Autism Research on campus. A Research Clinician’s day starts an hour before the program day starts and and ends an hour after the program ends. Interns will be paid a stipend. In addition to the program dates noted above, there is also mandatory 40 hour training that all interns must attend the week of June 19 – June 23 (prior to the program’s implementation). We also expect Research Clinical Interns to help with clean-up for the program on July 31st and August 1st.

The focus of the summerMAX program is to teach social skills and provide multiple opportunities for the children to practice skills taught. Specifically we work on areas that are problems for children with high functioning autism spectrum disorders: social skills, interest expansion, interpretation of non-literal language (idioms), and face and affect recognition. Each day/session is divided up into treatment cycles (number of cycles dependent upon program). The first part of each cycle consists of instruction that includes role play and modeling. After this instruction, the children participate in a therapeutic activity in which they practice the skills they were just taught in a cooperative group exercise.

INTERN APPLICATION IS HERE:

https://redcap.canisius.edu/surveys/?s=UVQPgoGcZY
Internships are highly competitive and intensive, but are also a great opportunity to build clinical and research experience. Clinical Interns must be current undergraduate or graduate students or (if graduating in May 2023) enrolled in a graduate program for fall 2023.

Submitted by: Jonathan Rodgers, Associate Professor, Psychology, Institute for Autism Research