Human Development Center

UW-Eau Claire's Human Development Center (HDC) is an interdisciplinary program that provides both educational support and behavioral health services to individuals, families, and schools in Wisconsin.  

Our clinics and services staff are skilled professional clinicians and educators dedicated to providing critical support to families and children in the Eau Claire community while creating many unique pre-professional and clinical learning opportunities for Blugold students in a wide range of disciplines and degree programs.    

Appropriately credentialed faculty supervisors and student clinicians represent the following professional areas:

• Education and Learning
• Family Assessment (Social Work)
• Nursing
• School Psychology
• Special Education and Inclusive Practices
• Speech Language Pathology (Communication Sciences and Disorders)

The HDC sponsors four clinical programs:

Interdisciplinary Assessment Clinic: Student clinicians from multiple areas provide comprehensive evaluations for children, adolescents, and young adults.

Psychological Services Center: Student clinicians from the university’s highly regarded school psychology graduate program provide assessment, intervention, and consultation services to children, adolescents, and young adults.

Academic Intervention Clinic: Student clinicians provide school-aged children and adolescents with educational support in the areas of math, reading, and written language.

Language and Literacy Clinic: A collaborative effort between communication sciences and disorders and school psychology graduate programs and offers assessment, intervention, and consultation services to clients referred from the community.

The HDC also sponsors research programs and provides consultation and professional development programming in the areas of academic assessment and intervention, behavioral health, and child and school psychology. The HDC is located on the first floor of the Human Sciences and Services building.

Educational opportunities for students 

Undergraduate reading internship 

In the Interdisciplinary Assessment Clinic, student interns work with children to examine their reading needs. These interns complete assessments of reading skills, test evidence‐based intervention strategies and consult with parents regarding assessment results. 

Academic Intervention Clinic student jobs

The AIC uses evidence‐based assessment and intervention approaches to improve the academic skills of students in local schools. Undergraduate Blugold students work 1:1 or with small groups of students to deliver interventions and monitor progress. Undergraduate students work collaboratively with graduate students and public school staff.

Collaborative student-faculty research 

There are many opportunities through the HDC for collaborative student research during each semester as well as during the summer. Participating in research provides valuable experience that can complement future graduate school applications and/or employment. Many research projects allow Blugold undergraduates to collaborate with current graduate students in the communication science and disorders program or school psychology programs. 

Summer reading or math intervention 

As an extension of the Academic Intervention Clinic, clinic‐based summer programs provide area school children with an opportunity to receive reading and math intervention support during summer vacation. Blugolds can gain extensive pre-professional training in the delivery of evidence‐based interventions and research through these summer HDC experiences. 

Additional opportunities for interested students include:

• Assisting in local elementary schools with reading and mathematics screening assessments.  
• Observing clinic cases within the Human Development Center. 
• Collaborating with a faculty member to develop an individualized undergraduate internship experience. 

If interested in any of these opportunities or to find out what else is going on in the HDC, please contact Dr. Mike Axelrod at axelromi@dbctl.com.