The Occupational Health Psychology (OHP) graduate training program at the University of Connecticut is designed to recruit and train highly qualified and diverse graduate students from areas of psychology, public health and nursing to become Ph.D. researchers capable of conducting multi-disciplinary and trans- disciplinary research focusing on the behavioral aspects of occupational health. The graduate training program follows a scientist-practitioner model in which trainees complete a 15-credit graduate certificate in occupational health psychology consisting of a graduate proseminar taught by core faculty, a required graduate methods course in epidemiology, faculty-supervised field or lab research in OHP, and two elective graduate courses in psychology and/or public health. The research and topical curriculum includes personnel/organizational psychology, human factors/ergonomics, public health graduate courses and epidemiology taught by 5 specially trained faculty from both Psychology and the School of Medicine to equip trainees with the skills that will not only enable them to conduct research on today's occupational health problems, but also to develop and apply new concepts of work organization and workplace design for enhancing worker health and productivity beyond current expectations, thus realizing the true potential of trans-disciplinary occupational health research to meet both regional and national needs. With eight full-time trainees supported by fellowships each year, the expectation is that 15 motivated trainees will graduate with a combination of a Ph.D. and the OHP certificate over the 5-year grant period. Relevance A number of occupational trends, such as downsizing, contingent labor and longer work hours;telework, and increasing levels of automation in the workplace have propelled the need for studies on occupational health psychology. OHP is concerned with the broad range of exposures and mechanisms that affect the quality of working life and the responses of workers, such as how individual psychological attributes interact with job content and work organization as well as organizational policies and practices. OHP research and practice explores interventions targeting the work environment as well as the individual to create healthier workplaces and organizations, and to improve the capacity of workers to protect their safety and health and also to maximize their overall effectiveness and sense of wellbeing.
