Join The Wright Institute Team
Position Title: Adjunct Faculty Positions
Department: Clinical program
FLSA Status: Part-Time
Reports to: Program Director
Location: 2728 Durant Ave., Berkeley - In-person
Compensation: The Wright Institute utilizes a compensation step scale based on years of experience.
Revision Date: July, 2026
This job description is not a contract of employment and its provisions are not intended to imply a contractual relationship. It does not alter your at-will employment relationship with The Wright Institute. We appreciate your interest and patience as we complete internal planning and timelines. All applicants will be contacted once the review process begins.
The Wright Institute Doctor of Psychology Program invites applications several adjunct faculty positions. These are for Fall, Winter, and/or Spring 2026-2027 academic term.
We are seeking candidates with expertise in teaching a wide variety of courses. More broadly, we are seeking applicants who can identify with any one or more of the subject areas listed below including research methods, statistics, psychometrics, dissertation proposal development, and several intervention series courses.
Qualifications:
- Education: A health service psychology doctoral degree (Clinical, Counseling, School or Combined)
- Experience: Demonstrated experience in teaching at the graduate level with emphasizes clinical expertise, and/or research experience in relevant areas of instruction (see below).
- Skills: Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to engage and inspire students.
- Commitment: Dedication to fostering an inclusive and supportive learning environment.
The Wright Institute is an Equal Opportunity Employer and is committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse faculty and student body.
The courses for which instruction is being sought are as follows:
Case Conference (a two year-long sequence for 1st and 2nd year students, a 3-hour per week course, taught in the first year on Thursday mornings 9-12 and the second year on Monday mornings 9-12. Each class is followed by a mandatory 1-hour Case Conference Leaders meeting from 12-1).
Students in the first year Case Conference are assisted in developing a professional identity, comportment, and their ability to engage in and use supervision and consultation effectively. Emphasis is given to the development of reflective practice and self-awareness. Students are helped to become comfortable with conducting therapy within biopsychosocial and theoretical perspectives, to apply common factors of therapy and particularly, to develop a therapeutic alliance, formulate cases, set goals, design treatment plans and to evaluate the efficacy of interventions. Students gain familiarity with diagnosis, risk assessment, and legal/ethical decision-making. They learn to adjust to the customs of a service setting, including paperwork, agency protocols and functioning in an interdisciplinary team. Case Conference is also expected to aid students in adopting a multicultural perspective and to engage in issues of human diversity. Case Conference provides an opportunity for students to integrate learning from other course series and to gain a more mature, complex understanding ofclinical material and their role as clinicians.
While maintaining the goals of the first year Case Conference, the second-year Case Conference focuses on case material, helping students to articulate more sophisticated points of view. Emphasis is placed on analyzing problems in creating and maintaining the structure of psychotherapy, and the nature of the relationship between therapy participants. Students work to improve their ability to use evidence-based general therapeutic factors such as the therapeutic alliance, maintaining boundaries, and repairing ruptures in the alliance. They expand their awareness of multicultural complexity, including recognition of the role of power and privilege in clinical work. Students improve their use of supervision and learn to give and receive consultation while gaining capacity for self-reflection and awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses. Students improve their ability to detect and intervene in high risk and crisis situations. Their biopsychosocial case formulations become increasingly sophisticated, further integrating theory and science. Competence in differential diagnosis and treatment planning is emphasized. Students further integrate learning from assessment courses and other intervention courses. They broaden their clinical roles, manage a larger, more complex caseload, expand the modalities of and approaches to intervention, and increase their ability to integrate multiple perspectives. Students complete the second-year Case Conference with the Case-based Clinical Competency Exam, where they demonstrate their competence in oral and written case presentation.
Research Methods and Statistics I, II, III, and Tests and Measures Series provides students with the knowledge and skills needed to be intelligent consumers of clinical research, to implement effective research designs in their own research, and ultimately to disseminate research as health service psychologists (WI Aim 1). (RMS III is taught to 2nd year students in the Fall term on Wednesdays 9-12, RMS I, RMS II, and Tests and Measures are taught to 1st year students respectively in the Fall, Winter, and Spring on Thursdays from 1-4)
RM&S I (Methods) is part of the Research Methods and Statistics series which provides students with the knowledge and skills needed to be intelligent consumers of clinical research, to implement effective research designs in their own research, and ultimately to disseminate research as health service psychologists (WI Aim 1). RM&S I Methods is the first course in the Research Methods and Statistics series offered in the fall trimester of the first year.
Primary topics include sampling, internal and external validity, quantitative methods (correlational, experimental, and quasi-experimental/cohort designs), qualitative methods (e.g. interpretive phenomenological analysis, grounded theory, thematic analysis, narrative analysis), mixed methods, program evaluation, multicultural guidelines, and research ethics among others. RM&S I Methods is designed to help students meet Wright Institute competency #1g: students learn the current body of knowledge for research methodology.
RM&S II (Statistics) is the second course in the Research Methods and Statistics series offered in the winter trimester of the first year.
Primary topics include descriptive and inferential uses of statistics, the logic of hypothesis testing, power, effect size, t-tests and ANOVAs, correlation and regression, non-parametric statistics, extensions to advanced analyses, and the use of statistical software. RM&S II Statistics is designed to help students meet Wright Institute competency #1h, which requires that students learn the current body of knowledge in techniques of data analysis.
RM&S III (Prospectus Development) is part of the Research Methods and Statistics series which provides students with the knowledge and skills needed to be intelligent consumers of clinical research, to implement effective research designs in their own research, and ultimately to disseminate research as health service psychologists. RM&S III Prospectus Development is the final course in the Research Methods and Statisticsseries offered in the fall trimester of the second year.
Primary topics include the structure and content of a prospectus, research topic development, literature review, alternative methodologies, and the process for proposing and completing a dissertation.
Tests and Measurement is also included in the Foundations Series. Tests and Measurement is offered in the spring trimester of the first year.
Primary topics include basic psychometric principles, such as test reliability, validity, and scaling; processes for test construction and development; ethical, legal, and socio-cultural issues in test use; best practice in test administration.
Intervention: Child and Adolescent
The course focuses on practical issues in child and adolescent therapy, from the first meeting with the child and family, through the course of treatment. Students learn how to assess and intervene in the home, school, clinic, and other settings. The course covers individual, family, and group therapy with well-functioning and complex children/adolescents. Some of the primary topics include the clinical aspects of development, attachment, infant/child-parent psychotherapy, developmental trauma and transmission of trauma, and racial identity development.
Intervention: Family Systems
The Intervention series provides students with the knowledge and skills needed to prepare them for the effective biopsychosocial practice of clinical psychology. Intervention: Family Systems is the third course in the Intervention series and is offered in the spring trimester of the first year.
Primary topics include clinical interventions that use a systems approach to mediate psychological problems; the field of family psychology, including traditional and recent models of family therapy and couple therapy; theories of family development including theories of "normal" development, the development of psychopathology, and one's family of origin; sociocultural and concentric systems of influence.
Intervention: Brief
The Intervention series provides students with the knowledge and skills needed to prepare them for the effective biopsychosocial practice of clinical psychology. Intervention: Brief Therapy is a course in the Intervention series and is offered in the winter trimester of the third year.
Primary topics include key theories and practice of brief psychotherapy, the applications of brief psychotherapy in other-than-optimal clinical settings, a psychodynamic approach to interpretation, the uses of empathy in psychotherapy, exploration of the therapeutic relationship, work with "difficult" clients and clients who do not fit the ideal selection criteria for brief therapy, multicultural issues in brief therapy, the termination of brief psychotherapy, and the social meaning of brief psychotherapy.
Intervention: CBT
Intervention: Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy is the first course in the Intervention series and is offered in the fall trimester of the first year. Primary topics include basic theoretical tenets and concepts of CBT and the application of CBT framework to case study (formulation and intervention). Intervention: Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy is designed to help students meet Wright Institute competency #5a, which is that students learn the major theoretical models of intervention, and the planning, application, and the effectiveness of interventions.
Intervention: Psychodynamic
This course is designed to familiarize the student with fundamental principles of psychodynamic/psychoanalytic psychotherapy. We will first review the history and basic tenets of the major theories drive and ego psychology, object relations, self psychology and relational psychology. Readings will be assigned that illustrate and instruct matters of efficacy and effectiveness in psychodynamic psychotherapy. The application of research findings for psychodynamic approaches will be discussed. Psychodynamic interventions place the quality of the treatment on the therapeutic relationship, and on specific concepts such as the frame, transference, countertransference, resistance, and interpretation.
Intervention: Group
This course examines group theory, intervention, therapy, and research, as well as social psychology, leadership, social defenses, and interpersonal relations. Students also learn to engage a group in dialogue, and develop an awareness of their clinical style in groups. Students become more aware of how group process is ubiquitous, as they learn to be more informed members of groups to which they belong. Students are encouraged to reflect on their personal and professional experiences of groups as related to the course material.
Application:
Please submit the full application, a CV, and letter of interest using the form below.
Questions may be sent to cdilosa@wi.edu. References will be requested upon invitation to interview.