Welcome to the Mental Health Counseling Student Page!

Our program continues to gain national and international recognition. We have become a selective program (i.e., only able to admit a small percentage of our applicants), but we are striving to admit students who add the diversity of our current students and faculty. All of our faculty conduct research in multicultural and diversity issues, and students can expect to learn more about this as they move through the program. For example, Maribeth Jorgensen focuses on research and program evaluation in counseling, Jeff Penick focuses on gerontology issues, and Robyn Brammer publishes on gender identity, ethnic immigration issues, and spirituality.

A strength of our CACREP-accredited program is its unique balance between field experience and research. All of our students complete a research project or a thesis. We strongly advocate students to tie this research to work they are doing in their internship or with their faculty advisors, but students are free to do whatever interests them. Central also provides funding for students to present their research at national conferences.

Students come to the programs with a variety of backgrounds and training. However, we do have two prerequisites (PSY 362 and 363), both of these are statistics courses. We also recommend undergraduate students take the following: personality or abnormal; social or developmental; learning; physiological; and a course in history and systems of psychology. Students not having these courses should expect to do additional work when background material is needed.