Clinical Pastoral Education Center

What can you expect as an Allina CPE student?

• Expect to be involved in ministry in a wide range of clinical contexts and to a diversity of patients, families and staff, while functioning as part of an multidisciplinary care team.
• Expect to learn about yourself as person, as learner, as colleague in the learning process, and as minister to persons in distress.
• Expect to be in an ongoing conversation with others about that ministry and about yourself as minister: colleague learners in a small group, supervisor, staff chaplains, and hospital staff.
• Expect to learn about your limp (cf., Jacob and the angel) and how your strengths and limitations, your brokenness and healing, your faith and your doubts inhibit and enhance your spiritual care practice.
• Expect to be encouraged and challenged to become excellent in pastoral ministry, because this is the primary goal of clinical pastoral education at our Center.

Programs

Allina Clinical Pastoral Education offers three programs:

• Internship
• Chaplain Residency
• Supervisory Education

Locations

Allina Clinical Pastoral Education Center students gain a wealth of professional and personal experience at these Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan area hospitals:

• Abbott Northwestern Hospital
• Mercy Hospital
• St. Francis Regional Medical Center
• United Hospital
• Unity Hospital

They are part of Allina Hospitals & Clinics, a non-profit network of hospitals, clinics and other services that provide health care throughout Minnesota and western Wisconsin.

Abbott Northwestern and United hospitals work closely with Children’s Hospitals and Clinics in caring for premature newborns to older teens on the same campus.

Internship

Clergy, seminarians, members of religious orders, and lay persons are eligible to apply for this 400-hour clinical education experience. It occurs in the context of the following:

• individual learning goals set and evaluated by the student
• ministry to patients, families, and staff on a clinical assignment
• evening/night and weekend on call coverage
• peer learning and reflection through supervised meetings with a CPE student peer group
• seminars include critical reflection on students' clinical material, didactic instruction, theological reflection and integration, and open group with a focus on interpersonal dynamics
• personal and professional reflection facilitated by a CPE supervisor
• mid-unit and final evaluation of students' learning and of the program

Students may arrange academic credit with the seminary or graduate school of their choice.

Locations

• Abbott Northwestern Hospital
• Mercy Hospital
• St. Francis Regional Medical Center, Shakopee
• United Hospital
• Unity Hospital

Schedule

The internship program includes these unit options:

• fall or spring semester - 16 weeks at 26 hours a week at Abbott Northwestern Hospital and at Mercy & Unity Hospitals
• summer unit - 11 weeks at 40 hours a week at all sites

See our full calendar of programs.

Tuition

• $700 for one unit
• $350 for each additional, successive unit

Application process

Complete the Allina CPE Center Application and/or visit the To apply section.

Chaplain Residency

The chaplain residency program at Abbott Northwestern and United Hospitals offers advanced, specialized training in clinical pastoral care. The program emphasizes spiritual/theological integration and ethical reflection. Residents experience clinical assignments that provide in-depth exposure to specialty areas, enabling each student to become an integral part of the health care team.

These clinical assignments are available as part of the residency program at Abbott Northwestern Hospital:

• cardiovascular services
• childbirth and women’s health
• emergency services
• HIV/AIDS services
• neurology and neurosurgery
• rehabilitation

These clinical assignments are available as part of the residency program at United Hospital:

• birth center
• bariatric
• cancer care
• cardiovascular
• neuro services
• rehabilitation

Curriculum focus

Each unit of the residency program curriculum has a different focus or theme articulated through a project or integrative paper:

• 1st unit focus: Personal/Pastoral Integration Self-awareness: identity and authority formation. (Who am I? Who am I as minister/pastor/priest? Why am I doing what I am doing?) Spiritual / Theological grounding for ministry
• 2nd unit focus: Pastoral Competency Theological / Critical Reflection on Practice: developing the reflective practitioner (What am I to do, now that I know who I am and what grounds my authority?)
• 3rd unit focus: Pastoral Leadership & Empowerment How do I engage collaboratively with others in seeking justice and transforming systems? Constructive theology for a healing/transforming ministry
• 4th unit (at ANW) focus: Integration Involves 'thickening' all of the above in one’s personal and professional narrative. To be an educated theological practitioner is to know how to enable others to reflect theologically (to do theology) about their lives and about the systems that shape all of our lives and then to act creatively and collaboratively as an expression of ones faith.

Schedule

The chaplain residency program lasts 12 months at Abbott Northwestern Hospital and nine months at United Hospital.

Tuition

$350 for each unit.

Stipend and benefits

More information on stipend and benefits.

Prerequisites

To qualify for this program, students must complete one full unit of ACPE accredited clinical pastoral education and have a graduate theological degree. Ordination and pastoral experience are preferred, but not required.

To apply

Complete the Allina CPE Center Application and/or visit the To apply section.

Supervisory Education

Supervisory Clinical Pastoral Education involves extensive exposure to the theory and practice of supervision in ministry.  Methods include experience in providing individual and group supervision, one-way glass observation and video playback, and focus on conceptual and theoretical development as a clinical pastoral educator.  They also participate in the Twin Cities Clinical Pastoral Education Supervisory Academy.

Tuition

• $300 for the first unit
• $150 for each additional, successive unit

Stipend and benefits

More information on stipend and benefits.

Prerequisites

To qualify for this program, students must have completed a graduate theological degree and Levels 1 and 2 of accredited clinical pastoral education. Ordination and pastoral experience are preferred, but not required.

Application process

Complete the Allina CPE Center Application and/or visit the To apply section.

For more information, please contact us via cpe@allina.com.