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:
- Background in the field,
both theoretical and experiential
- Potential as a clinician
- Personal and interpersonal
skills adequate to function acceptably in a professional setting
- 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).
