Master of Education in Counseling

This course is designed to ground M.Ed. students in their professional counseling identity by examining the multiple professional roles and functions of counselors in a variety of settings and specialty areas. Legal and ethical standards of the profession are applied as students learn skills and characteristics of effective counseling considering levels of risk/crisis, developmental level and cultural context. Increased awareness of personal beliefs and values are integral to each student's development as a counselor.

A range of intervention strategies, both cognitive and behavioral, are studied and practiced. These include contingency management, desensitization, modeling, reality therapy, motivational interviewing, and various types of cognitive therapy.

Foundational affect-oriented theories are compared and built upon: person-centered and gestalt therapies with additional focus on transactional analysis, narrative therapy, solution-focused, and emerging approaches emphasizing mindfulness. These theories are philosophically rooted in the humanistic-existential school of thought and provide experience in major modes of therapeutic intervention: reflection, confrontation, interpretation, awareness and experiment.

This course provides students with the foundation for all practicum and internship experiences. Through course content, case conceptualization, and focused practice, students develop and demonstrate core communication and interpersonal skills essential for the counseling field: building relationships, conducting initial assessments, setting goals, implementing interventions, and evaluating outcomes. Students examine attitudes, values, and beliefs that enhance the helping process and acclimate to their future practicum sites. In progress pass/fail grading.

This course orients counselors to the complexities of working with clients from diverse backgrounds and considers race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, and religious/spiritual affiliation as well as discrimination related to age, poverty, gender, and disability. Students will have opportunities to reflect on the development of personal beliefs and attitudes and to develop skills for providing culturally competent communication and interventions.

This course is designed to build an understanding of (1) the complex processes of deliberate normative change in schools, (2) the expanded definitions of leadership within the roles of principal, counselor, and teacher in regard to school transformation and (3) the nature of 'interactive professionalism' among educators that is inherent in the emerging definitions of effective school leadership. Research on and examples of effective strategies and school transformations models are examined.