The courses offer opportunities for development of cohesive relations between students through self-disclosure, empathic listening, feedback, and role play. Competent counseling practice is informed and guided by theory. The program emphasizes thorough knowledge of clients' developmental and social contexts. During counseling practicum, students are closely supervised in their use of knowledge about clients and counseling theories. Students counsel school-aged children as well as adults and elders.
Supervised practice continues and is expanded during internship.
School counseling students take a common core of classes with students from the Mental Health Counseling and Marriage and Family Counseling programs. In addition, students in the School Counseling option also study aspects of counseling germane to the school setting. These include school counseling program development, working with children and adolescents, professional issues in school counseling, and a 600-hour internship in a school setting. The program focuses on a comprehensive and developmental approach to designing and implementing a school counseling program, and follows the standards developed by the American School Counselor Association. The program emphasis strives to provide the necessary self-awareness, knowledge, and skills for counseling students to become competent and capable professional school counselors.