Albizu University is a private, non-profit university offering undergraduate and graduate degrees in the fields of psychology, education, speech and language, criminal justice, ESOL, and human services. With campuses in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Miami, Florida, as well as a satellite campus in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, the university provides professional training that is relevant and responsive to the mental health needs of multicultural communities and supports culturally sensitive research that contributes to and helps grow the professions of psychology, health, education, and human services.
The university's history began in 1966, when a renowned Puerto Rican psychologist and educator, Dr. Carlos Albizu-Miranda, founded the Instituto Psicológico de Puerto Rico (Puerto Rico Institute of Psychology) in response to the need for culturally sensitive professional training in the area of clinical psychology. At the time, there were no graduate programs in clinical psychology in Puerto Rico. Mental health professionals were trained abroad and returned to their home country with the challenge of adapting what they had learned to fit the sociocultural realities of a Hispanic community. Dr. Albizu-Miranda himself received his training at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and incurred the same difficulties of incorporating what he had learned into the culture of the island upon returning home to Puerto Rico. He hoped to address the need for multicultural professional training in psychology with the establishment of the institute.
Recognizing a parallel need for multicultural training in clinical psychology in Southern Florida, which has a large Hispanic population, Dr. Albizu-Miranda opened the Miami Institute of Psychology in Miami, Florida, in 1980. In January 2000, the two main campuses were merged under the shared name Carlos Albizu University in honor of their founder, becoming the first institution in North America to be named after a Hispanic. Today, they are commonly known as Albizu University and continue the tradition of offering programs, both in theory and practice, that stay true to addressing and honoring the multicultural heritages found in both Puerto Rico and South Florida.
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Campuses
Albizu University has two main campuses, one in Miami, Florida, and one in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. There is a third, satellite campus in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico.
Miami Campus
Located in the Miami, Florida, metropolitan area, the Miami campus offers over 30 undergraduate and graduate degree and certificate programs in the fields of psychology, education, business, speech and language, English as a second language, criminal justice, and human services. Known as the "Gateway to Latin America and the Caribbean," Miami has one of the largest multi-ethnic populations in the United States, thus providing the perfect environment to support Albizu University in its mission to offer culturally sensitive training to a diverse population in an area with a wide range of practical training sites.
San Juan Campus
Located in the heart of Puerto Rico's capital city, the San Juan campus set a precedent as the first independent professional school of psychology in North America. Originally called the Puerto Rico Institute of Psychology, Dr. Albizu-Miranda modeled the university after institutes of psychology in Europe where practice and internship coexisted. Now, over 50 years since its founding, the San Juan campus has over 1,000 students and has expanded to include two on-campus training clinics: the Clínica de Salud Mental de la Comunidad (Community Mental Health Clinic) and the Clínica de Patología del Habla y Lenguaje (Speech and Language Pathology Clinic).
The Community Mental Health Clinic
The Community Mental Health Clinic (CMHC) is a training clinic on the campus of Albizu University in San Juan, Puerto Rico. An active clinic that provides culturally sensitive mental health services to low income and minority clients in San Juan and surrounding communities, CMHC also serves as a practicum and internship site for Albizu University graduate students.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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