Assistantships

All doctoral students at Derner receive assistantships for the first four years of their enrollment and are assigned to a particular professor.

Types of Assistantships

The PsyD program offers four types of assistantships:

1. Departmental assistantships are available to first- and second-year students.
2. Testing assistantships are offered to students in the 5-year track and are available in the third and fourth years for the Intellectual Assessment I and II (fall and spring) and School Neuropsychology courses.
3. Clinical assistantships are available to third- and fourth-year students and involve work in the Derner Hempstead Child Clinic.
4. Research assistantships are available from the first year on. Assistants work with a faculty member on a project and involve a number of duties, including data collection, literature review, and scoring of protocols.

Financial Assistance

Each year, students in our PsyD program receive at least  $7, 500 in assistantships. The decision as to which students receive the larger assistantships is based on a variety of factors, including previous academic or professional accomplishments and financial need. 

The expectation is that an incoming student receiving financial aid will continue to receive aid for all four years, contingent on satisfactory academic progress in general as well as on satisfactory performance as a graduate assistant. At the end of the academic year, faculty members prepare evaluations for their graduate assistants and express their preferences with respect to having the same assistant the following year. The students are also asked for their preferences, and every attempt is made to accommodate both professors’ and students’ preferences.

Work Requirement

Assistantships are for a maximum of 5 hours per week for a total of 45 hours per semester. 

Assignment to Professors

Each assistant is assigned to a particular professor, who decides what work the student will do, and a time schedule for its completion. Students generally receive assistantships for the first four years in which they are enrolled. However, this is contingent on satisfactory academic progress in general as well as on satisfactory performance as a graduate assistant. Assistantship assignments are made based on a combination of faculty and student preferences. Every attempt is made to accommodate these preferences.

Additional Opportunities

In addition to program-specific assistantships, there are graduate assistantships offered to Derner students by other departments at Adelphi. These departments, such as Admissions and the Center for Academic Enrichment and Support, have their own budgets and make their own decisions, but they always do so after consulting with the Dean and Associate Dean.