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 Accreditation Council for Education in Nutrition & Dietetics (ACEND) of the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics.

ACEND 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 ACEND 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 46-week, 10.5-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, 264 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.
• 7 weeks of community nutrition including WIC clinics, home delivered meals, congregate feeding, community outreach programs, 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. With faculty guidance and preceptor input, interns develop learning goals, a plan to achieve these goals and an evaluation instrument to measure their success in achieving these learning goals.

• The program begins in early August and graduates in late June of the following year.
• 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 which offers access to 9,540 electronic full access journals, 13,204 online textbooks and 172 online data bases in addition to print resources.
• Sixteen interns are accepted each year. The historic enrollment pattern is 50% Indiana residents and 50% nonresidents.
• Our most recent 5-year (2007-2011) first-time passing rate on the registration examination for dietitians is 83%. The first-time passing rate for the class of 2011 dietetic interns is 93%. Data is not yet available on the class of 2012.
• In addition to the Dietetic Internship Program, we offer an 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 Accreditation Council for Education in Nutrition & Dietetics (ACEND) from an ACEND-accredited program with an overall GPA of 3.0 or above. The average grade point average for the internship class of 2012-2013 is 3.43. 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. Applicants are required to provide evidence of maturity, leadership, responsibility and time management skills. It is helpful, but not mandatory, if the work experience is in dietetics or a related field. We require Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores.