OBJECTIVES 

The School of Education offers a Master of Arts program designed to prepare graduate students for advanced roles in the field of school or community counseling. This program includes theory, research, and an intense supervised practicum and internship. In the electives, graduate students may choose additional depth in the counseling areas of either research or practice.

Prerequisite

1. Meet all University requirements stated under Academic Regulations and a minimum of 3.00 undergraduate GPA.

2. Write a 500-word statement of accomplishments, interests, and goals relating to the counseling profession. This statement will be submitted to the program faculty, who will then conduct an admissions interview. Entry into the program is contingent on passing this interview. The M.A. Counseling Program trains students to work with children and adults in both public and private settings. Because they deal with very sensitive personal issues, it is crucial that those who are admitted and graduated from this program have integrity, competency, and uphold the ethical codes of the American Counseling Association or the American School Counselor Association. For this reason, the M.A. Counseling Program faculty will conduct an admissions interview.

Continuing Requirements

1. Annual student performance evaluations of competency to continue throughout the program.

2. Maintain minimum of 3.00 GPA for all coursework in the program. Graduate courses with grades less than a "B" require written program faculty approval to continue in the program.

PROGRAM LEARNING OUTCOMES

The Master of Arts in Counseling follows the Council for Accreditation of Counseling & Related Educational Programs (CACREP) eight common core areas representing the foundational knowledge required of all entry-level counselor education graduates (CACREP, 2016). In addition to the common core areas, students are required curricular experiences and to demonstrate knowledge and skills in the areas of foundations, contextual dimensions, knowledge, and clinical instruction. The standards for the eight common core areas are listed below:

1. Professional Counseling Orientation and Ethical Practice: The counselor candidate understands the history and philosophy of the counselors’ roles and responsibilities; advocacy processes; counseling credentialing; counselors’ practices and advocacy processes; strategies for self-evaluation and self-care; ethical standards of the counseling relationship, confidentiality, professional responsibility, and relationship with other professionals; ethical and legal standards of evaluation, assessment, and interpretation; ethical standards of supervision and training; ethical and legal standards of research and publication, distance counseling, technology, and social media; and of resolving ethical issues.

2. Social and Cultural Diversity: The counselor candidate uses understanding of multicultural and pluralistic characteristics within and among diverse groups nationally and internationally; theories and models of multicultural counseling; cultural identity development; multicultural counseling competencies; help-seeking behaviors of diverse clients; the impact of spiritual beliefs on worldviews; societal subgroups; and social mores and differing lifestyles.

3. Human Growth and Development: The counselor candidate works with learning theories within cultural contexts; the nature and needs of individuals across the lifespan; factors that affect human development, functioning, and behavior; trauma effects on diverse individuals across the lifespan; and ethical and culturally relevant strategies for promoting resilience, optimum development, and wellness across the lifespan.

4. Career Development: The counselor candidate applies the theories and models of career development, counseling, and decision making; strategies for assessing factors that contribute to career development; strategies for advocating for diverse clients’ career, educational development, and employment opportunities in a global economy; strategies for facilitating client skill development for career, educational, life-work planning, and management; and ethical and culturally relevant strategies for addressing career development.

5. Counseling and Helping Relationships: The counselor candidate understands and uses essential interviewing, counseling, and case conceptualization; theories and models of counseling; counselor characteristics and behaviors that influence the counseling process; developmentally counseling treatment or intervention plans; evidence-based counseling strategies and techniques for prevention and intervention; strategies to promote client understanding of and access to a variety of community-based resources; a systems approach to conceptualizing clients; ethical and culturally relevant strategies for establishing and maintaining in-person and technology-assisted relationships; the impact of technology on the counseling process; consultation theories and their applications; suicide prevention models and strategies; crisis intervention, trauma-informed, and community-based strategies; and processes for aiding students in developing a personal model of counseling.

6. Counseling and Group Work: The counselor candidate engages in the theoretical foundations of group counseling and group work; dynamics associated with group process and development; therapeutic factors and how they contribute to group effectiveness; direct experiences in which counselor candidate participate as group members in a small group; the essential steps in forming a group; ethical and culturally relevant strategies for designing and facilitating group; group leadership styles; and group counseling methods and skills.

7. Assessment and Testing: The counselor candidate understands the importance of assessment and testing in counseling; group and individual education and psychometric theories and approaches to appraisal; data and information gathering methods; validity reliability, psychometric statistics, factors influencing appraisals, and use of appraisal results in helping processes; procedures for assessing risk of aggression or danger to others, self-inflicted harm, or suicide; and procedures for identifying trauma and abuse and for reporting abuse.

8. Research and Program Evaluation: The counselor candidate understands the importance of research in advancing the counseling profession, including how to critique research; types of research; basic statistics; research-report development; research implementation; program evaluation; needs assessment; and ethical and culturally relevant strategies for conducting, interpreting, and reporting the results of research and/or program evaluation.