Curriculum – EdD SPP

The EdD-SPP is conferred upon the student who has fulfilled the following requirements:

1. Maintenance of enrollment eligibility through satisfactory academic performance, professional development and behavior.
2. Successful completion of all required courses and program requirements or approved equivalents in a student’s EdD program path with a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.0 on all required coursework.
3. Successful completion of minimum graduation requirements as officially communicated to students through the university catalog, student publications, and other official documents of the university.
4. Freedom from all indebtedness and other obligations to the university.

Graduates of the EdD-SPP program will be able to: 

• Evaluate the predominant theories and emergent trends within both the discipline and professional of sport and performance psychology.
• Determine appropriate professional conduct for a variety of situations based on the legal and ethical codes of clinical mental health counseling and sport and performance psychology.
• Implement an individual philosophy of performance excellence integrating the disciplines of psychology sport science, and counseling.
• Implement culturally responsive consulting strategies based upon the relationships, issues, and trends within a multicultural society.
• Extend the predominant theory, research, and application trends in sport and performance psychology through the completion of individual research.

8 CMPC  Knowledge Competency Areas:

• K1 – Professional Ethics and Standards
• K2 – Sport Psychology
• K3 – Sport Science
• K4 – Psychopathology
• K5 – Helping Relationships
• K6 – Research Methods and Statistics
• K7 – Psychological Foundations of Behavior
• K8 – Diversity and Culture

You can buy your textbooks online. Find the SPP textbook list here.

The UWS catalog houses the curriculum, course descriptions, curriculum sequence and other helpful information about the program. 
View the current catalog.

Program Planners

Find your EdD-SPP planner here.

The Sport and Performance Psychology Consulting Concentration is designed for students pursuing a career in applied sport and performance psychology.  The cornerstone of the concentration is the development of professional competence in implementing ethical and evidence-based interventions with performance populations.  Students identify a population of interest, secure intervention opportunities, and are mentored in their experience by UWS faculty members with extensive applied experience in a variety of performance domains.  All SPP faculty mentors are listed on the Certified Mental Performance Consultant (CMPC) Registry of Approved Mentors and abide by both program and CMPC Mentor Guidelines and Best practice Recommendations. In this way, hours gained in the concentration are eligible to meet the requirements for CMPC certification.

Note: All components of the SPP Mentorship program, including client consultations, individual mentorship meetings, group mentorship meetings, and recorded client sessions must be conducted entirely in English, regardless of students’ and clients’ geographic location or preferred language. A student with a disability that limits their ability to complete the program requirements in English may request a reasonable accommodation via the Office of Student Success. A student with an approved accommodation must contact the Mentorship Coordinator prior to beginning the SPPC concentration to discuss how the accommodation will be implemented within the mentorship program.

Positive psychology is the scientific study of the strengths that enable individuals and communities to thrive. The field is founded on the belief that people want to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives, to cultivate what is best within themselves and to enhance their experiences of love, work, and play. Positive leadership applies the principles of positive psychology to the challenges in competitive sport environments and in the workplace. This concentration is intended to help leaders and their teams or organizations succeed through a gained understanding of human motivations and behaviors, and how to apply that understanding to achieve extraordinary results in:

• Long-term motivation
• Team and business functional effectiveness
• Effective work processes
• Organizational design/structure that leads to optimal performance

UWS also offers a Doctorate of Education in Sport and Performance Psychology with a Clinical Mental Health Counseling specialization for those interested in pursuing counseling licensure as well as an EdD in SPP. This integrated EdD degree includes a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling conferred after the first 90 credits.

Students in the integrated degree can do the mentorship concentration but cannot complete the PLA concentration.