Residents are required to attend 3 seminars that are offered by Department faculty and guest speakers and are held throughout the training year. The Assessment and Teaching Conference is a didactic seminar which meets weekly for 1-1/2 hours and covers advanced assessment and treatment issues, including empirically supported treatments, ethical and professional issues, and issues of cultural and individual diversity. The Psychotherapy Case Conference meets every other week for 1-1/2 hours and focuses on presentation and discussion of diverse diagnostic and treatment cases. Residents meet biweekly as a group with the Director of Clinical Training and on alternate weeks attend a support group specifically for psychology residents.

Each of the three residency tracks also requires and provides other track-specific seminars, as detailed in the individual track descriptions. The Department maintains a research colloquium series, which focuses on significant research investigations carried out here and elsewhere. In addition, the Medical Center is replete with opportunities for additional didactic learning. Most Departments in the Medical Center offer Grand Rounds, ward rounds, conferences and topical seminars that residents are also able to attend.

Although the residency at Rush is primarily a clinical year, residents are expected to devote 10% time to research endeavors with faculty. Most residency supervisors are involved in active programs of research, reflecting the Department's emphasis on both the science and the practice of psychology. As a result, a wide variety of research opportunities are available. Residents attend research presentations from all faculty members at the start of the year so that they may learn about current research projects and align themselves with specific faculty members' research interests.

To provide an opportunity to develop skills in presenting research and to give faculty a chance to learn about residents' dissertation research, residents give a brief research presentation at the department's monthly Psychology Rounds. The resident presentations are held during the months of March and May.

As the largest medical center in the city of Chicago, Rush attracts ethnically and racially diverse patients from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds. This wealth of individual differences enriches all aspects of residency training.