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The Community Counseling Program at the University of Oklahoma
has been in existence in the Department of Educational Psychology
since the 1960s. The program is recognized as a training program
of the highest quality meeting the standards of training for
the profession of counseling. The breadth of course work and
the depth of content is combined with the highest quality
instruction to prepare students for the challenging profession
of counseling. The faculty is committed to rigorous educational
standards to ensure that students are adequately trained to
meet the various challenges of the field as well as the expectations
of employers. To this end, a specific program of study is
required that will provide the student with the requisite
informational and skill base necessary to pursue counseling
as a profession. Rather than offer a large collection of unrelated
courses, the M.Ed. Is designed to be a cohesive program of
study.
The Community Counseling Program consists of 49 semester
hours leading to the Master of Education (M.Ed.) degree. We
see counselor training as essentially beginning at the graduate
level, so students from various undergraduate academic backgrounds
other than psychology will likely qualify for the program.
For students with backgrounds other than psychology or the
behavioral sciences, additional outside reading may be beneficial
to add to one’s understanding of content areas in the
field. The program meets most requirements for becoming a
Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC). It is important to
note, however, that Oklahoma, along with most other states,
requires 60 semester hours of course work for the LPC. Students
interested in pursuing this usually take an additional 11
hours of courses beyond the M.Ed., either concurrently with
program requirements or after completing the degree. This
program is designed to train students interested in working
in community, state, and federal agencies. It also provides
excellent preparation for applications to doctoral programs
in applied psychology or counseling. |
