Jake Van Epps, Ph.D. portrait
  • Adjunct Assistant Professor, Educational Psychology
801-581-2806

Education

  • Ph.D., Counseling Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University. Project: Self-Compassion in Psychotherapy: Predicting Change in College Counseling Center Clients
  • M.Ed., Community Counseling, University of Georgia
  • B.A., Psychology, Castelton University

Biography

Jake is adjunct faculty in the graduate counseling programs in the Department of Educational Psychology. Jake is also the Coordinator of Testing and Assessment at the University of Utah Testing Center and a Staff Psychologist at the University Counseling Center. In addition, Jake runs the Evidenced Based Practice and Assessment seminars for doctoral interns.

Jake’s clinical interests include, but are not limited to, couples and family therapy, identity integration, relational issues, and emotion regulation strategies. His clinical work is founded on the humanistic values of holding a hopeful, constructive view of human beings, and of their substantial capacity to be self-determining. Jake takes an ecological perspective in counseling by striving to understand individuals, couples, and families within their social, cultural and familial contexts. Jake strives to integrate cultural knowledge with traditional evidenced-based psychotherapeutic strategies to empower clients to increase their general wellbeing and satisfaction from life.

In addition to his clinical work, Jake is on the Leadership Committee of the LGBTQ Affirmative Psychotherapists Guild of Utah. In his advocacy role at the Guild, he is active in developing safe resources for community members seeking counseling and training, and works to increase competency of Utah therapists working with LGBTQ+ populations.

Jake is also a moderator on the American Psychology Association owned Google+ community Psychology which as 650,000 members.