Beginning Your Counseling Career

Graduate Preparation and Beyond

Mary Olufunmilayo Adekson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781138609167
• eBook ISBN: 9780429851476
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Beginning Your Counseling Career provides a comprehensive overview of the counseling profession and equips students with the clinical and administrative skills they need to progress in the field.

Helpfully organized into five sections, the text addresses basic career considerations and preparatory aspects of the profession, as well as a range of topics to help students broaden their focus on professional development. Chapters cover areas including online masters and doctoral programs, developing a counseling identity, mentoring students for private practice, supporting minority students in counseling programs, considerations for international students, special education legislation, and more.

Suitable for students taking preliminary courses in counseling as well as practicum and internship classes, Beginning Your Counseling Career offers a detailed and up-to-date framework for aspiring professional counselors at both masters and doctoral levels.

Section I

Graduate Preparation at the Counseling Master’s Level

Chapter 1

Getting Accepted Into a Master’s Program and Getting a Graduate Assistantship

Kevon K. Bruce, Tiffany Fuller, and Timothy J. Hakenewerth

You have purchased this book with the hope of gaining some insight on getting accepted into a master’s program and/or obtaining a graduate assistantship because you understand the increasing global competition in the job market. The need to produce competent professionals with the capacity to create solutions to various societal problems has increased the need for career advancement in almost every field. Today, earning a bachelor’s degree may not satisfy the requirements in your state to become a professional counselor. Since professional counseling is an evolving profession with a number of opportunities for employment, it is important that a counseling graduate obtain a masters-level education as the new standard to be successful. Therefore, this chapter is a great starting point to answering as many of your questions as possible.

Being a professional counselor has many rewards, and the greatest is uniting with other individuals with a strong desire to help others. To prepare for this career, your journey will begin with graduate training culminating in a master’s degree that will prepare you for licensure. Although this journey will be difficult at times, it will also be transformational, spurring significant personal and professional growth, and resulting in a new professional identity.

How should you begin this journey? Perhaps even more important than researching programs is engaging in reflexivity to better understand your professional goals and gain greater self-awareness. Engaging in reflexivity will empower you to make informed choices to meet your personalized career goals (Boswell, Wilson, Stark, & Onwuegbuzie, 2015). Furthermore, reflexivity is an integral skill for counselors (Woodbridge & Rust O’Beirne, 2017), and beginning this practice before applying to a program will enhance your qualifications to become a competent counselor-in-training.

The first benchmark in becoming a professional counselor is to select a master’s program. This task is an important one that requires researching programs to assess their training procedures. How will their required coursework, field experiences, and timelines support your current life and prepare you for your future goals? The first step is to ensure that you will be a good fit for the program as the program will be for you. We encourage you to continue to be reflexive as you contemplate these options and consider what values and factors are most important to you. We will now take an in-depth look into each of the steps of getting into the master’s program of your choice and obtaining a graduate assistantship.

Choosing a Program

Program Format

One of the first considerations for choosing a graduate program in counseling is the course delivery format. If you are employed full-time and have no plans to stop working, this step is crucial to how you will move forward. For starters, programs are offered in formats as face-to-face (otherwise known as traditional formats or “brick-and-mortar”), fully-online and asynchronous, or a hybrid between the two. We will briefly review key benefits and drawbacks of both online and traditional formats, with hybrid programs sharing characteristics of both formats.

Online Programs

Interest and implementation of online course delivery have continued to grow in counselor education programs (Watson, 2012). Two key benefits that online formats provide are flexibility and financial benefits. Flexibility allows you to structure completing your coursework on a schedule that works for you. Online programs also remove the burdens associated with relocation, travel, or competing work schedules. Flexibility in scheduling also allows students to maintain full-time employment. Most online programs have rolling start dates. Finally, online formats may offer students additional skills in developing their technological competence through primarily interacting online (Pan, Yashar, Pothast, & Wicklund, 2016). Significant drawbacks of the online format include fewer opportunities for relationship-building among colleagues and professors and the necessity of significantly more discipline in creating one’s own structure and organization (Pan et al., 2016). Wibrowski, Matthews, and Kitsantas (2017) point out that connections within online communities may not feel commensurate with face-to-face connections, which could cause feelings of isolation that result in poorer performance by those enrolled in online programs.

Traditional Programs

A review of CACREP accredited programs in 2019 revealed that 91% (n = 716) of accredited programs offer the majority of their coursework face-to-face. One of the primary benefits you would receive from a traditional program is a greater opportunity for networking and support from colleagues and faculty due to higher levels of interaction in classes and on campus. Students in traditional formats may also benefit from greater access to brick-and-mortar resources designed to support student learning, such as counseling and wellness centers and other ancillary resources. Although many traditional programs are designed in a nights-and-weekends format to accommodate students working full-time, a prominent drawback of traditional programs is the rigid structure of time, location, and pacing of the instruction. As you consider which format will fit you best, we encourage you to reflect on your needs for support and flexibility and how varying formats may support your development or create barriers to reaching your career goals.

Technological advancements today have made it easy to take a course at any university, anywhere and anytime one wishes to. The era of online learning is currently present in every part of the world, giving individuals great opportunities to advance their careers in any university they never imagined they would. However, despite the technological innovations, the traditional mode of learning is still embraced by most people. Both modes of learning have their pros and cons, based on the need and perception of the student.

Building Leaders

Traditional programs have been praised for their ability to enable professionals to keep in touch with leaders in their fields and hence enhance great leadership skills. In traditional programs, there are physical interactions and an aspect of mentorship and learning from professors and industry leaders that is neither as transparent nor as easily-accessible in online programs.

Cost Considerations

On the other hand, online programs have been recognized for their financial advantages, as most cost less compared to in-residence degree programs. You must be prepared to choose the program that suits your lifestyle. You also have the option of funding your education with a student loan, should you choose to become a full-time student wishing only to focus on your educational goals.

Relocation

Additionally, should the traditional program require in-residence, those who have already started families may find it difficult to leave their families behind while relocating. Online programs take care of individuals who are married and have settled in a particular location. Therefore, most students consider online classes flexible and less demanding compared to traditional counseling graduate programs. Additionally, should a traditional program require in-residence; those who are not able to commute and have commitments to their location such as families and work may find it difficult to relocate. Online programs may offer greater flexibility for these individuals who have settled in a particular location. Therefore, students who value regional flexibility may find considering online classes more accessible and less demanding compared to traditional counseling graduate programs.

Completion and Flexibility

You may find that most online counseling programs have faster completion duration compared to the traditional classes, due to relatively shorter semesters. Traditional programs often structure learning in sixteen-week semesters, whereas students in online programs may be able to complete the same coursework in an eight-week period. Also, there is great flexibility because of the rolling start dates of most online programs, which are not found in traditional modes of instruction. For instance, instead of waiting until spring to start traditional programs, one can start an online program almost any time. A student is able to choose the time they want to begin and complete their programs. An individual working full-time has the freedom to complete coursework when they can. Regardless of geographical location, online students are able to plan their study schedules and become great professional counselors through various graduate programs offered online.

Difficulty in Evaluation

Proponents of traditional programs argue that it is difficult to train students and evaluate skills online. Face-to-face interaction still plays a fundamental role in assessing the student’s character and important physical classroom engagement, which helps students succeed in their careers.

Socialization and Networking

Distance education technologies have been blamed for killing socialization and networking in higher education. Most students find it terrifying to study on their own without other peers. Human beings are social creatures and as a result, feelings of isolation may result in poor performance. A connection with an online community may not feel the same as connecting with peers in a classroom setup for most students (Wibrowski et al., 2017). For such reasons, some students still insist on attending on-campus counseling programs. There are, however, students who prefer the solitude of the online environment.

Creating Own Path and Time to Learn

Despite its flexibility, which enables students to choose their own time and path to learning, most students still find online programs very complex. Succeeding in an online class requires one to be organized, disciplined, and proactive in seeking help when challenged by the course content. A professor cannot compel an online student to study and make good use of the resources as there are no physical contacts, but professors who teach in traditional face-to-face classrooms can be much more convincing in guiding students to complete their assignments on time (Pan et al., 2016).

Great Interactions

Traditional counseling programs are praised for providing students with opportunities to intermingle with other learners from a varied range of cultural backgrounds. Such an environment offers an excellent platform to learn and appreciate cultures of different communities, which is a key aspect of counseling. Since counselors engage with people from various ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds, it is important that they understand and experience people and their different perceptions about certain life issues (Cooper, Mitchell, Eckerle, & Martin, 2016). By doing so, counselors grow to become non-judgmental and non-biased in their work.

Virtual Skills

The digital age has come with an increased demand for virtual skills among most professionals in various fields. An online counseling program helps learners develop this skill by refining their online communication capacity and equipping them with the most current virtual tools (Pan et al., 2016). These skills are also important in building students’ abilities after graduation through effectively interacting with clients, employees, and other co-workers at their places of work as counselors.

Overview of Institutional and Programmatic Accreditation

Let’s determine if an accredited program is necessary for your future goals. First, what is an accredited program? Olivi (2013) simply stated that having the accreditation designation ensures that the program or institution provides a quality education for the consumer. Being accredited adds value to an institution or program because of the performance criteria that was set and met. It goes further to demonstrate that the leaders of the higher education institution valued the accreditation process and thereby voluntarily participated in an external peer-review.

Institutional accreditation is the designation institutions seek in order to demonstrate they have successfully been evaluated in financial stability, governance, administration, student services and admissions, effectiveness, institutional resources, and constituency relationships. Olivi (2013) described institutional accreditation as a demonstration of minimal levels of competence or knowledge met by the program’s graduates; therefore, financial aid can be awarded to qualifying students. This designation is also considered by many employers before providing tuition reimbursement to employees. Students graduating from an accredited institution may fare better when seeking employment than students who graduated from non-accredited institutions of higher education. Employers consider the fact that accredited university graduates meet the basic competencies of education. This gives rise to the fact that accredited programs have higher completion and employment rates than the non-accredited programs.

Conversely, non-accredited institutions may be cheaper than accredited programs, often offer condensed programs for rapid graduation or certificate completion, and also have lower completion rates. Non-accredited schools have lower standards for admission and may be suitable for students who are not seeking licensure. Many non-accredited types of programs are online-only, and students cannot receive any state or federal financial aid while enrolled in these programs.

Programmatic accreditation is a form of accreditation in which specific academic programs within an institution seek to demonstrate successful evaluation of minimum competencies in a specific field of study (Olivi, 2013), as well as the elements of financial viability and financial aid that are part of the institutional accreditation process. The Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) is the premier accrediting body for professional counseling programs. This programmatic accreditation designation also assists future students in the decision-making process when choosing a program, as well as when transferring credits (Head & Johnson, 2011). It is also an indicator that the community will receive qualified graduates.

The last section of the 2016 CACREP Standards (2015) addresses standardized benchmarks for counselor education programs, which in turn promote a unified counseling profession. These standards address areas of the future counseling professional’s education to include: the learning environment, developing a professional counseling identity, professional practice to include practicum, internship sites, and course load. The standards also address the qualification of the counseling supervisors as w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• About the Editor
• About the Contributors
• Introduction: Overview of Major Discussions in Beginning Your Counseling Career: Graduate Preparation and Beyond
• Section 1 Graduate Preparation at the Counseling Master’s Level
• Section 2 Graduate Preparation at the Counselor Education Doctoral Level
• Section 3 Important Elements of Transitioning From Student to Professional Counselor
• Section 4 Minorities and International Students in Counseling and Counselor Education
• Section 5 Special Considerations in the Career of Professional School Counseling
• Index