Clinical Training Facilities
Adult Division Facilities
Most student research and clinical training takes place on the Coral Gables campus. Other aspects of training occur at the university's Medical campus in downtown Miami. The Department of Psychology recently moved into a new building, which incorporates faculty and graduate student offices, classrooms, laboratories and research rooms, and the department's Psychological Services Center. This new facility incorporates clinical research laboratories (with one-way viewing panels and recording equipment) as well as comfortable rooms for therapy. The department has an extensive computer laboratory that is available to graduate students, with both Macintosh and PC platforms, suitable peripherals, and access to mainframe and Internet resources.
Child Division Facilities
The Flipse Building, a state of the art facility located on the Coral Gables campus, is the academic heart of the Child Division. On-site facilities include four laboratories with one way mirrors and state-of-the-art computer-assisted video systems for recording and coding interaction, as well as a sound-attenuated interaction chamber. Approximately 50 networked personal computers are in use for writing and data analysis. In addition, several advanced servers are used for large-scale database analysis, computer analysis of videotaped interactions, and other tailored applications.
The Linda Ray Intervention Center (LRIC), a facility for interventions with high risk inner-city infants serves as a "total service school" for multiple research projects. A former inner city crack house, the building has been renovated by a non-profit organization, Infants In Need, Inc., with donations of money, materials and labor from philanthropists, industry and the trade unions.
The Center for Autism and Related Disabilities is a well funded program offering opportunities for research and training in the understanding the nature of Pervasive Developmental Disorders.
The Autism and Developmental Disorders Monitoring Network or ADDM - The Florida node of ADDM is an important research resource housed in the Child Division. The goal of the ADDM Network is to provide comparable, population-based estimates of prevalence rates of autism and related disorders at different sites over time.
Children's Registry and Information System or CHRIS is a statewide database developed, maintained, and housed at the Child Division of the Psychology Department that tracks children who receive services under Part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The CHRIS database provides research opportunities related to locating, evaluating, and providing necessary services to at-risk children. This resource also provides a useful tool for service coordination.
Child Division researchers also work with several Community Resources. The faculty have extensive collaborations with local agencies that serve as sites for research studies including the Dade County Public Schools and Dade County Head Start.
The following facilities are also affiliated with the Child Division at the University of Miami:
The University of Miami's Mailman Center is a nationally-recognized research and clinical training facility. With over 13,000 patient visits per year, the Mailman Center provides a wealth of clinical services for children and older individuals with disabilities, within a family-centered and culturally competent environment.
The Debbie Institute is a center for research and training that provides center-based programs for families and infants who have disabilities or are at risk for developmental delays. The Institute is the base for grants that provide programs for teen mothers and their infants, for a national collaborative grant to investigate the impact of early intervention on children born to mothers with less than 12 years of education, and for other related programs.
The Batchelor Children's Research Institute is the home of the Maternal Lifestyle Study, a local site of a nation-wide investigation of the impact of prenatal drug exposure on infant and child development. Facilities include computer-linked video and physiological data recording suites, computer-assisted video-coding workstations, and ongoing administration of age-appropriate behavioral protocols.
Health Division Facilities
The Health Psychology division is housed in the Flipse building on the Coral Gables campus, the Behavioral Medicine Research Building (BMRB) on the University of Miami Coral Gables Campus and the Behavioral Medicine Research Center (BMRC), in the newly-constructed Clinical Research Buildin. This building is part of a unified Medical Center Complex consisting of the University of Miami School of Medicine, Papper Clinical Immunology laboratory, the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center.Jackson Memorial Hospital, and the Miami Veterans Affairs Medical Center. This Medical Center Complex is located in the city of Miami. Jackson Memorial Hospital (JMH), the University's major teaching hospital is part of the University of Miami Medical Center. The two sites are approximately 20 minutes apart by automobile or Metrorail and are linked by phone, facsimile, and internet via a Windows NT secure network. This dual site logistical system has served us well since 1983.
The BMRB has more than 10,000 square feet of research space specifically designed for biobehavioral research. The building contains a human psychophysiology laboratory, quantitative/statistics laboratory, electrophysiological laboratory, behavioral testing laboratory, and histology/neuroanatomy laboratory, biomedical engineering/ electronics laboratory. Recently the building underwent renovations to make it more compatible with the current research plan. Added were a new group therapy room with a one-way mirror, two assessment rooms, and a waiting room. New wiring was installed to upgrade the computer communications capabilities with a fiber optic cable connecting the router in the building to the University's fiber optic backbone.
The BMRC consists of 12,000 square feet of newly renovated research space. The BMRC contains intake/assessment suites with medical examination rooms, an echocardiography laboratory, four fully equipped psychophysiology laboratories each with a control room and an inner testing room, exercise stress testing laboratory equipped with a metabolic cart, and bicycle ergometer, a suite of three rooms for the biochemical assay laboratory, a group intervention room, two assessment rooms, a two-room data management suite, locked storage areas, a conference room with wet bar, and an administrative area with reception area, waiting room, mail/copy/fax room, kitchen, and offices for the faculty investigators and research staff. Each room is equipped with computers, all wired into a local area network which connects via a T1 line to the Medical Center's fiber optic backbone.
The facilities used for immunology and molecular biology research are housed in the E. M. Papper Clinical Immunology Laboratory, which occupies 3,000 square feet in the Rosenstiel Medical Research Building and 1,500 square feet in the Miami VA Medical Center. This lab has available 3 cytometry labs with 4 flow cytometers, a P2 and a P3 tissue culture facility and a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) lab.