Inside a JWU Psychology Internship at Charlotte Rescue Mission

Most undergraduates don’t get to sit in on group counseling sessions with people in active addiction recovery — let alone help lead them. But Teagan Bradford ’26 spent her spring semester doing exactly that, interning at Rebound, the Men’s Addiction Recovery Center at the Charlotte Rescue Mission. The JWU Charlotte Psychology student walked away with hands-on clinical experience, original research on art and mental well-being, and a clearer sense of where her career is headed.

From Media & Communication to Psychology

Though she's fascinated by how the mind works, Bradford didn’t start out in psychology. She came to Johnson & Wales as a Media & Communication student, planning to work in book editing. But the more she researched how people process and understand information, the more her questions pointed somewhere else — toward the psychology behind it.  

Conversations with professors in the psychology program encouraged her to transfer into the program. “Once I got into the psychology program, it kind of snowballed, and now I'm obsessed,” Bradford says.

While taking the Group Counseling course with Professor Howard Slutzky, Psy.D. (known as “Dr. Howard” to students), Bradford learned about the opportunity to work with the Mission. 

“I'd never been that interested in group counseling as part of my career, but I really enjoyed that class,” Bradford says. “We were doing mock group counseling, but students were getting into their actual lives, so it was very hands-on. I felt ready to apply to the Charlotte Rescue Mission internship by the end of that semester.”

A Day Inside the Charlotte Rescue Mission Internship

The internship put Bradford right in the middle of the daily operations of the center, working directly with residents. On a typical day, she started with the admissions team, reviewing calls about prospective residents and helping with intake when people arrived. Then she would head to group counseling to help facilitate sessions. After leaving to attend classes at JWU, she would return in the afternoons to assist other counselors with paperwork, sit in on one-on-one sessions and review resident homework.

Working closely with recovering addicts came with some challenges, especially as a young woman working with all male residents. But the experience helped Bradford learn how to conduct herself in the field while also exploring the psychology behind addiction.

“There were times when I was treated with less respect, and the residents expected me to be more lenient with them,” Bradford shares. “The counselors refer to that as addict behavior. In a lot of the residents’ family structures, there was a female in their lives who enabled them, and so they look to other women in their lives to do the same.”

But Bradford always felt safe thanks to the supportive staff and the safety precautions the Mission has in place. She had plenty of guidance to learn how to navigate different situations and personalities. “It does make me feel more confident in my ability to demand respect when I’m being mistreated,” Bradford adds.

Research on Art and Mental Well-Being

The experience offered many lessons, including an opportunity to conduct a research project about the impact of having an artistic outlet on mental well-being. Bradford used the project for a research capstone course.

“Two times a week, the residents and I would make mosaics out of construction paper and glue sticks,” she says. “They exceeded every expectation that I set for them — they got so creative that they made 3D models in under an hour. It's really gorgeous work, and they put a lot of their hearts into it.”

Then every other week, Bradford surveyed the residents on their emotional well-being using the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale, a widely used psychometric tool to measure positive mental health and psychological well-being.

“I'm planning to use that information to show how important and helpful it is for people who are in these situations — many of them have severe childhood trauma and also trauma from being an adult in active addiction and dealing with homelessness or poverty — to have artistic outlets.”

Advice for Future Psychology Interns

Her advice for other students who want to pursue an internship like this is simple: “Show up and ask a lot of questions. That's one of the biggest compliments that I got from my supervisors at Rebound, that I'm willing to ask questions rather than just being like ‘I don't know, so I'm just going to sit in the corner and watch.’”

“It was an opportunity that not a lot of undergrads get — to really get hands-on experience at this point in our careers.”

She also credits Dr. Howard with helping her land the internship and gain the confidence to keep asking questions. “Dr. Howard is honestly such an amazing mentor,” Bradford says. “He's very kind-hearted, and he's very patient with us. I'm never afraid to admit that I don't know something, which I think is important. I’ve had teachers before where it feels like if I ask a question, then I'm admitting that I don't know, which is kind of embarrassing. But I never feel that at Johnson & Wales.”

Now that she has completed her Psychology degree, Bradford is already thinking about what comes next: graduate school to study either neuropsychology or health psychology, fields she might never have explored before walking into Dr. Howard’s classroom. 

The Charlotte Rescue Mission internship isn’t just a line on her résumé. It’s proof that the work she wants to do is work she can already do. “It was an opportunity that not a lot of undergrads get — to really get hands-on experience at this point in our careers,” says Bradford of her internship. “It's almost unheard of, and we're very lucky to have that at JWU.”

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