Eight Curriculum Domains
The MFT program is designed to meet BBS educational standards for licensure, COAMFTE accreditation standards, and program objectives. Eight curriculum domains organize the program:
- Foundations of Counseling and MFT: Coursework introduces a social constructionist perspective and focuses on bridging individual and relational understandings of mental health and psychotherapy.
- Human development: Individual and family: Coursework focuses on development in a cultural context and the implications of developmental perspectives for therapy.
- Family systems and social constructionist coursework: Drawing upon a variety of systemic and social constructionist perspectives, coursework addresses family therapy approaches, cultural dimensions of experience in therapy, children in family therapy, couples in therapy, and testing and assessment. Special topics courses also apply this conceptual base, addressing substance abuse, child abuse assessment, family counseling in the schools, domestic violence, trauma, and other larger systems issues.
- Sociocultural and larger systems coursework: Coursework focuses on multicultural and cross-cultural experiences and issues as well as issues of the relationships between families and larger systems. To build cultural competence, coursework focuses on the cultural self of the therapist and of client families as well as specific therapy approaches for working responsively to clients' diverse cultural experiences.
- Supervised clinical experience: A minimum of nine units of supervised clinical experience is required. Six of the nine units are in Practica taken over two semesters. Each Practicum involves participating as part of a six person clinical team under the direct supervision of a licensed faculty supervisor. Students provide direct therapy in the Center for Community Counseling, our department's clinical training facility. Students have the opportunity to work in an ongoing therapy relationship with three to seven individual, couple, and family client situations and assist with peers' cases each semester. Students are supervised through live supervision.
Students also participate in an advanced clinical training experience called Traineeship. Students provide therapy and other mental health services in a program-approved community based site. Traineeship requires a 12 month continuous experience.
Students must complete a minimum of 500 direct therapy hours plus 100 hours of supervision to complete the clinical training requirements. A minimum of 250 therapy hours must be with couples, families or other significant relationships. A minimum of 50 hours of supervision must be via direct access to the live data of therapy (e.g. live supervision, videotape or audiotape supervision). Students must receive both group and individual supervision. Therapy should be systemically grounded in theory and supervised by an AAMFT Approved Supervisor, Approved Supervisor Candidate, or equivalent.
- Professional studies: Coursework covers legal and ethical mandates of the MFT profession and addresses the complexities of psychotherapy law and MFT ethical standards in cultural value contexts.
- Research and inquiry: Students take two research courses. Ed. 690: Methods of Inquiry is followed by the design and implementation of a Master's project in CSP 710A.
- Capstone: The final course in the program, CSP 710B, provides capstone and comprehensive experiences in which to apply research methods, theory and practice development, and inquiry skills. In the final semester, students write a theory and personal integration paper and take a simulated licensing exam as the comprehensive experience.
Last Modified 10/16/10 02:08
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