Counseling Psychology Guidelines

All students who wish to pursue graduate studies in psychology will need to meet admissions prerequisites and program requirements according to their area of concentration.

Students studying counseling psychology will be pursuing their studies in order to work as professionals in the field. In addition, in many cases students studying counseling psychology use the courses in their degrees as the basis for licensing and certification as helping professionals in human services fields. Because of this, Antioch University has a responsibility to the profession and the public to insure that this program meets certain professional standards. Accordingly, the ILPS Department has adopted the following set of specifications, in consultation with the other centers of Antioch University offering masters-level work in counseling psychology fields. Students will find that these requirements are generally comparable to those of residential counseling programs nationwide.

Admissions Requirements

Program Prerequisites:
All students who wish to pursue studies in counseling psychology must have completed at least three courses in psychology at the upper division undergraduate or at the graduate level before their application can be considered for admission. Prospective students who have not met this requirement should arrange to take appropriate courses at local universities before applying to the program or discuss the possibility of completing an individualized course through the ILPS Department as a nonmatriculated student. Recommended courses include abnormal psychology, personality theory, social psychology, and introduction to counseling methods.

Selection Criteria:
In selecting appropriate students for studying counseling psychology in the ILPS program, we are concerned with four areas:

1. Background in the field, both theoretical and experiential
2. Potential as a clinician
3. Personal and interpersonal skills adequate to function acceptably in a professional setting
4. Ethical standards consistent with those of the profession

We are interested in both your academic or theoretical background and your practical or experiential background, and of course we would hope that they would be interrelated. Academic background might be gained through undergraduate or graduate course work in psychology or related fields. We would expect some knowledge of personality theory, abnormal psychology, and human development. Readings in popular psychology, while potentially useful, would not be adequate in themselves.

If you are concerned with the adequacy of your background in the field, you may want to discuss the matter with our Enrollment Services Officer or with a faculty member before applying to the ILPS master of arts program. You may decide to pursue additional course work or gain additional experience in the field before applying to the program.

We will assess the application in the following manner:

(1) Completion of three upper-division undergraduate or graduate courses.

(2) Letters of reference and completed reference form from two professionals in the field, The reference letters should address directly the four areas of concern listed above. People who serve as reference for you should know you well enough to feel confident that you can become a well-functioning clinician and that you can be successful in a self-directed, individually designed, counseling psychology program. Please ask your references to complete the personal reference form enclosed in the application packet.

(3) Statement of educational goals, which is part of your application to the program. You should address all the questions listed on the educational goals sheet in your application packet, being especially careful to give us a very thorough picture of your background in the field. Discuss the area of concentration within the field of psychology in which you wish to focus your program. In addition, you must include an autobiographical sketch to give us a sense of the course of your life that has led you to desire to do graduate work in counseling psychology at this time.

(THE ABOVE ITEMS MUST BE RECEIVED BY THE ADMISSIONS OFFICE IN ORDER TO COMPLETE YOUR APPLICATION.)

(4) Personal interview with an Antioch faculty member. In most instances, a member of the faculty will contact an applicant for a personal or telephone interview. The interview takes place after the completed application has been received and reviewed by the admissions committee.

Please note that if you plan to use courses in this degree to satisfy professional license or certification requirements, you should research the requirements for that license or certification with the appropriate board and ensure they can be met with this degree. Note that as an ILPS student, you will be a registered student in Ohio. Information about certification can be found at National Board for Certified Counselors website.

Curricular Requirements

All ILPS students take their first two courses with their advisor: Foundations of Academic Discourse and Applied Curriculum Design. In addition, counseling psychology students are expected to develop an individualized curriculum that includes at least one course in each of the areas listed below. These guidelines have been designed to develop an adequate knowledge base and to prepare the student for application for licensure.

Developmental Psychology: In-depth study of the life-span perspective. Additional study of major theories and research findings about human development across the life span: either an overview of child, adolescent, and adult development or an in-depth focus on one of these age-spans.

Theories of Personality: Graduate-level study and historical review of the major theories of human personality and behavior. This knowledge area may also include the in-depth study of a personality theory of particular interest to you that is not one of the “major theories."

Psychopathology: In-depth study of adaptive and maladaptive behavior and the concept of psychological dysfunction. This knowledge area must include a study of the traditional medically based disorders and their diagnostic criteria. It may also include the study of additional systems of conceptualizing and classifying dysfunction or maladaptive behavior.

Research and Inquiry: Graduate-level study of quantitative and qualitative research design, including exposure to the statistical concepts and procedures utilized in both types of design. Study of this knowledge area should prepare you to be a knowledgeable and discriminating reader of the psychological research literature, as well as to write your own research design.

Systems Perspective: Graduate-level theoretical base in systems theory, including the application of systems theory to one or more of the following: couples, families, organizations, social systems, (e.g. public policy, community psychology).

Human Diversity: In-depth study of cultural and ethnic differences and the implications of these differences in working with clients, including the impact on individual beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviors. Differences should minimally include those of gender, race, politics, religion, and class.

Ethics and Law: Study of the ethical and legal standards of the profession of psychology, including the laws of your state or province and the “Ethical Principles of Psychologists’ published by the American Psychological Association (or the standards of the equivalent organization in your country of residence if you live outside the United States). If you are interested in a specific field of counseling (such as art therapy, marriage and family counseling) or if you are combining your study of counseling psychology with preparation in an additional area of the “healing arts” (such as a form of body work), this learning component should include the study of the ethical standards of the appropriate specialties and professional organizations.

Therapeutic Process: Graduate-level study of the therapeutic process, including theory and practical training in the skills and issues of therapy. We strongly encourage the inclusion of an experiential component. As a minimum, you must address in depth the theory and practice of group, family or couples counseling, according to your interests. As a graduate-level learner, your developing therapeutic skills should always be guided by a theoretical context.

Internship

An internship is the key feature of a counseling psychology program. It provides an opportunity to develop your clinical skills under professional supervision and to develop your professional understanding and behavior in a broad sense through contact with a wide variety of professionals and professional functions.

We require an internship between 360 and 450 hours, through which the student may earn between 8 and 10 credits (At least 45 hours of work is required for each internship credit.) The internship is typically an unpaid internship in an agency setting in which the student has the opportunity to work with a variety of populations (child, adult, abused, chemically dependent, etc.) with some diversity in modalities and techniques (individual, group, family, etc.). We ask that the student make a commitment of at least 10 hours per week to the internship setting during the internship period. The internship may be split between two sites in order to acquire diverse experience, but it is considered one learning experience, and no credit is given until all of the internship has been successfully completed. Because of the functions the internship serves within the counseling psychology program, a private practice, whether the student’s own practice or another individual’s, is not acceptable as an internship setting, nor can the student’s job be substituted for an official internship. The student may make use of other settings associated with courses in specific subject areas in practicum learning. Such practica cannot be substituted for the internship.

The internship supervisor should have at least a master’s degree from a clinically-oriented program and a minimum of one post-degree year of clinical experience. Supervisors and supervising agencies will take full legal and professional responsibility for the student’s internship work.

Amount of supervision: If the internship is less than 10 hours per week, supervision should include two hours per week of group supervision in groups no larger than six, or one hour of individual supervision.If the internship is 10 hours per week or more, there should be two hours per week of supervision, of which one hour should be individual supervision.

Per American Psychological Association standards, supervisors must not be engaged in a dual relationship with the student under their supervision.

We expect that students would do well in their internships, and that is usually the case. If, however, the internship evaluations reveal serious problems in any of these areas, the student will be given three months of additional internship experience—in that setting or another one that meets Antioch’s criteria—to bring them within the range of acceptability for master’s-level students in counseling psychology. If the evaluation at the end of that three-month period is not satisfactory in this respect, the students will be given the option of withdrawing from the program or shift the field of his or her degree focus from counseling psychology to a purely academic area. If a change of focus is made, the student will be required to work with his or her degree committee and faculty advisor to rewrite the individualized curriculum, removing the internship course and adding other appropriate courses.

The decision to offer students the opportunity to withdraw or shift program focus will be made by the program director after review of the evaluations and consultation with the student, the internship supervisor, the degree committee, and the faculty advisor. Such a decision is appealable to the faculty grievance committee on grounds of process only.

Capstone Learning

Students complete either a thesis (10 credits) or a capstone project
(5 credits).

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