Pepperdine Applied Research Center

History of PARC

Given long-standing interest in faculty and student research at the GSEP clinics and counseling centers, the Pepperdine Applied Research Center (PARC) was formed in 2003 and supported by an internal Faculty Scholarship Award for its first three years to further develop these efforts.

Committed to the highest standards of academic excellence and a values-centered education, PARC was created to embody the mission of Pepperdine University and the spirit of the Boyer Model. Guided by the Boyer Model, PARC was created as a venue for discovering and advancing knowledge about the real-life practice of clinic-based assessment and therapy, integrating knowledge from clinical research and practice synthesized from the input of clients, students, supervisors and faculty, applying knowledge gained from the practice of clinic-based scholarship, and sharing it with others though clinic and classroom teaching, professional presentations, scholarly literature, and other means of transfer to the community.

PARC has been inspired and informed by the efforts of Practice Research Networks (PRN) over the past 30 years (For more on PRN in Psychology, see the June 2001 issue of Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, Volume 8(2); for PRN in Psychiatry, see http://www.psych.org/MainMenu/Research/
PracticeResearchNetworkandHealthServicesResearch.aspx), which have the goal of understanding what happens in clinical practice and determining ways of improving clinical / mental health care in the community.