Dietetic Internship

Program Overview

The Department of Nutrition & Dietetics Dietetic Internship Program at the Indiana University School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences is granted accreditation by the Commission on Accreditation for Dietetics Education of the American Dietetic Association. CADE is a specialized accrediting body recognized by the Commission on Recognition of Postsecondary Accreditation and the United States Department of Education. The address and phone number of CADE are: 120 South Riverside Plaza, Suite 2000, Chicago, IL 60606-6995, 312-899-4876.

Satisfactory completion of the Dietetic Internship Program allows the student to sit for the Registration Examination for Dietitians. Dietetic Registration is required for certification in Indiana.

The Dietetic Internship Program is a 44-week, 10-month certificate program with a concentration in Clinical and Customer Service. The program includes eight credits of graduate-level course work (the equivalent of a semester of graduate school) and a minimum of 1,232 hours of supervised practice. Successful completion of the program requires a final grade of C in each of the required courses and satisfactory completion of all supervised practice rotations.

The Dietetic Internship provides:

• 12 weeks of food systems management including extended care
• 15 weeks of medical nutrition therapy including special experiences in pediatrics, diabetes clinics and renal outpatient clinics.
• 6 weeks of community nutrition including WIC clinics, home delivered meals, congregate feeding, community clinics, food banks, soup kitchens and school feeding.
• The concentration in Clinical and Customer Service is the final four weeks of the Dietetic Internship Program.

The concentration experience provides an opportunity for each intern to increase his/her depth of information and proficiency in a particular aspect of clinical or customer service. The intern has the opportunity to personalize this concentration according to his/her interests. The Dietetic Internship Program provides a master list of competencies for the concentration experience from which each intern will select nine competencies. With faculty guidance and preceptor input, interns develop a learning plan to achieve these competencies and an evaluation instrument to measure their success in achieving these learning outcomes.

• The program begins in mid-August and graduates in late June.
• Our decentralized Dietetic Internship Program is centered in Indianapolis with approximately 55 sites and 155 participating preceptors. Interns experience a wide variety of practice sites of various sizes and complexity during their program.
• Interns have access to the Indiana University School of Medicine Library with several hundred online journals.
• Sixteen interns are accepted each year. The historic enrollment pattern has been 50% Indiana residents and 50% nonresident.
• Our most recent 5-year (2004-2008) first-time passing rate on the registration examination for dietitians is 89%.
• In addition to the Dietetic Internship Program, we offer a MS program in Nutrition that accepts the eight lecture credits from the Dietetic Internship Program. It is possible to move into the MS program at the conclusion of the Dietetic Internship Program.

General Selection Criteria

We are looking for mature, flexible students who enjoy directing their own learning and who are able to make themselves “at home”quickly. Successful applicants will have completed a bachelor’s degree and all the course work required to meet the current academic requirements of the Commission on Accreditation of Dietetic Education (CADE) from a CADE-accredited program with an overall GPA of 3.0 or above. We will consider applicants with GPAs slightly lower, if these GPAs are the result of changes in major, serious illness, etc. Work experience is important but we will consider applicants, who because of their athletic scholarships, found it difficult to develop a significant work experience history. It is helpful, but not mandatory, if the work experience is in dietetics or a related field. We require Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores.

The City of Indianapolis

Indianapolis (“Indy”), the 13th largest city in the US, is located in the center of Indiana. It is known for its beautiful downtown area. The city is the site of the new NCAA Sports Museum and the INDIANAPOLIS 500. Indy is a center for amateur sport and also provides plenty of other cultural and entertainment activities (www.indy.org). The cost of living in Indianapolis is considerably lower than many sections of the US. Indy usually ranks at the national average 1.0 in the Chamber of Commerce Cost of Living Data. Many areas of the US, especially those on the west coast, rocky mountain area and east coast have a much higher cost of living than Indianapolis.