Florida Tech’s Court Assessment Team is both a training opportunity for doctoral students and a service to the local judiciary. We steadily receive referrals from the Circuit Court to evaluate defendants for competency to proceed and sanity. All work is directly observed and supervised by Dr. Costopoulos and she often testifies in these cases. All opinions and conclusions in the report are the responsibility of the licensed psychologist signing the report.

The practicum students have the rare opportunity to conduct clinical interviews, administer forensic assessments, and ask defendants questions regarding the legal criteria, in both the jail and the courthouse. Some assessments they have administered included the TOMM, MFAST, WMS-IV, DCT, DAST, WAIS, ABAS-3, MoCA, and MMPI-2RF. The practicum includes collaborative writing, with students co-authoring and signing the reports, and lots of supervision meetings for differential diagnosis and case conceptualization. Didactic topics discussed include landmark cases and relevant Florida Statutes.