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Community Counseling, Master of Arts

     The Community Mental Health Counseling program is committed to educating counselors who will provide leadership in serving the mental health needs of individuals across the lifespan. This program offers an education that is holistic, reflecting an integration of mind, body and spirit. The purpose of a community mental health counselor’s intervention is seen as facilitating individual growth towards fulfilling one’s human potential. This program focuses on helping counselors design interventions that attend to the wide span of personal problems that emerge from handling the stresses and strains of modern life. Counselors are prepared to work in community mental health centers, private practice, social service agencies, health services organizations, businesses, and educational or pastoral settings.

Learning Outcomes for the Community Mental Health Program

The student will concentrate on:

•  Skill Competencies: the skills necessary for engaging in the helping process. Students will demonstrate culturally appropriate skills and techniques necessary for successful pre-session, in-session, and post-session counseling behaviors.

•  Case Conceptualization: skills to formulate a clear under-standing of the client’s struggle and frame a counseling plan that reflects a theoretical orientation and is respectful of the contextual nature of the client’s world view.

•  Counseling Process: ability to recognize any aspect of counselor-client interaction, total or in part, that can be understood to directly or indirectly affect the counselor, the client, the direction of sessions, and movement toward the resulting outcome of counseling.

•  Personal Growth: an awareness of the aspects of the student’s character that enhance work as a counselor, as well as those aspects that serve as obstacles to work as a counselor; skills to work actively to utilize strengths in addressing any personal obstacles.

Matriculation

A student seeking to matriculate into the Community Counseling program is required to submit to the Office of Graduate and Professional Studies (in McDonough Hall) the following:

1.  A completed admission application along with the required application fee.  

2.  All immunization records as required by the Office of Graduate and Professional Studies;

3.  All official college transcripts mailed directly to the Office of Graduate and Professional Studies. These must be from accredited institutions and must evidence at least a baccalaureate degree. Transcripts are required prior to registration.

4.  Two (2) letters of professional reference mailed directly to The Office of Graduate and Professional Studies recommending the candidate for graduate work in the Community Counseling Program at Saint Joseph College. Recommendation forms are available in the Office of Graduate and Professional Studies.

In addition, Community Counseling applicants are required to:

5.  Submit a Personal Entrance Essay (Essay guidelines available through the Office of Graduate and Professional Studies and the Department of Counseling and Family Therapy.)

6.  You will be contacted to sign up for an interview session once your application and official transcript is submitted and received.

Note: Following the interview and admission to the program, a planned program of study (POS) will be prepared based on the number of credits you wish to carry each semester. This POS will then be mailed to you with instructions for registration and final matriculation.

When all the required documentation is received by the Office of Graduate and Professional Studies, the file will be submitted to the Department of Counseling and Family Therapy for matriculation.

 Degree Requirements (54 credits)                                       

Foundations

   Professional Orientation to and Foundations of Community Counseling (3 Credits)